


Brigitte Snaps Back

by Kount_Xero



Category: Ginger Snaps (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Depressing, Depression, Drama, Gen, Tragedy, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-23 22:57:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 33,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19711207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kount_Xero/pseuds/Kount_Xero
Summary: The world of the Fitzgerald sisters has ended on Halloween night, but Brigitte survived... and so has Sam. Now, together, they must find a way out of the mess they're in and do it before the Curse consumes them both. (direct sequel to the first film.)





	1. Prologue (Breathe Believer.)

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: This will be, barring unforeseen events, my final Ginger Snaps fanfic. The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do is the only thing I’ve never allowed myself to do, and this is for me, more than anything else... and for Brigitte and Sam. As it was with all of my other (admittedly numerous) Ginger Snaps fanfics, this one incorporates bits and pieces of Karen Walton’s original script into it and takes some parts of the revised script, as well as the deleted scenes, into account.
> 
> Warnings include: violence, swearing, self-harm, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Okay, maybe not rock’n’roll.

The warm mass underneath her expanded with a ragged breath that sent small reverberations through the thick skin and transferred the difficulty of breathing, through touch, to her. The chest contracted, deflating as the breath was released, the sound of it echoing hollow in the dark.

She felt a tear slide down her cheek and onto the hide below, which expanded once more, this time with a slighter, almost relaxed breath. Almost as if she _(no. that’s not her underneath. That’s not her, it can’t be her, it just can’t)_ was now content, in a way she had never been.

Momentarily, she wished for the same contentment, the same serenity that her sister had found in this one breath.

_No,_ she wanted to say, _no. Don’t go. I need you, I still need you so much, you can’t leave me alone out here, I would never, I would never do that to you!_

She felt the breath release, dispersing into the quiet of the room in the basement, and with it, she felt the last bit of the intangible, fragile, unknown thing that others called life slip out through the lungs of what once was her sister.

The breaths ceased.

Brigitte found herself wondering what she was going to do with all this silence. The ambient hum of the house echoed through the corridors and Brigitte could hear her own pulse against the thick hide of the lycanthrope, but the rest was still, and she didn’t know what to do with any of it.

She took in a breath, wondering if she, too, could breathe it out and let it end right there.

A gasp and a breath, from the hallway.

_From the hallway._

Brigitte lifted her head. She could see the trail of blood on the floor, lit up by the pale lights of her room, but that was it. She couldn’t see through the door, but she could hear ragged gasps coming from the hallway.

The thought pushed all others away. Brigitte stood up, stepped over the creature’s carcass and got to the door. She hesitated, lingered in the threshold, shifting, unable to take that step into the darkness beyond the relative safety of her room.

Gasp. Gasp. Gasp. Gasp. Gasp.

A struggle for more breath, for more life and could she hope? Could she hope to hope?

Her voice broke as she spoke.

“S-Sam?”


	2. Incurable

Brigitte listens in until she hears his breathing, still in short inhalations, keeping time with her pounding heart.

She feels something crawling up her spine, giving her goosebumps and flowing down towards her hands. She can feel it at the tips of her fingers... something bundled up, high-energy, explosive, in her chest. Something like madness.

_(go one shade orange and nobody will be able to see your dark circles)_

Brigitte keeps repeating that to herself as she steps away from the imaginary sanctuary of her room and towards the sound. Every step brings her closer and with every passing moment, his breathing acquires more of a hum, as if he’s getting closer to having a voice.

As her eyes adjust to the dark, she sees a shape, sprawled across the pool of blood, his. She can still taste it.

_(it feels so good, Brigitte)_

Brigitte shrugs it off.

The shade pulsates, expanding, contracting. Brigitte cautiously steps forward and crouches, feeling the hem of her coat soak up the liquid _(don’t think about the blood, don’t think about how sweet it tastes)_ on the floor. “Sam..?”

A hesitant hand, trembling from aversion reaches out, grasps at the dark to find him, to find his body. She finds something slick and wet and shaking with every breath.

How..?

Brigitte considers the question, but it’s a foregone conclusion at this point. The infection is saving him, blessing him _(and her, you think of him that way, you think of him)_ with the first sign of the Curse, the healing. He’s slowly healing up, but this means...

_(it’s like an infection, it works from the inside out, it’s like a virus)_

There’s only one cure, Brigitte knows, and it’s back in their room. So she gets up and goes back. She finds the syringe on the ground – another piece lying where it fell. She takes it and observes the thick, purple liquid that will save them.

She has to cure him. She has to cure him, because he is the only one who knows how to make the cure in the first place.

_(cure him. cure yourself.)_

Brigitte steps over Ginger’s _(the wolf’s, she’s the wolf now, the lycanthrope, that’s not Ginger on the ground, not anymore)_ corpse and stops, a step into the hallway. No. Wait. She can’t cure him. The state he’s in – it’ll kill him.

Then, she decides, she has to cure herself. Brigitte feels around her neck with her free hand. She knows where the artery is, she’s memorized every available point that could be used for exsanguination. She raises the needle, but stops halfway.

Wait.

No, no, not it either.

It worked on Jason, yeah, but he’s easily twice her size and she's about to use nearly the same amount. What if it knocks her out? Paralyzes her? She can’t afford to not be able to move – she has to get them both out of that basement.

That tingling, itching sensation returns then, moving to her shoulders. Her fingers contort, trying to grasp at the phantom itch, her mind spirals inward in attempt to dislodge stray pieces of thoughts and merge them into a coherent whole.

Madness.

Brigitte looks at the hallway, to the needle, feels the presence of the lycanthrope’s carcass, is aware of what time it is, when Henry will be back, that Pamela did fuck knows what at the party, that she has no way of explaining any of this to anyone or fuck, even getting herself out and... and...

Brigitte clenches her teeth and beats her panic into submission: no. No. No. No. There is a way. There is a fucking way through this, out of this. There is a way. There is a way.

_(improvise. Work it out, wriggle through the cracks.)_

There is a limit, Brigitte feels, of how much anyone can navigate rapidly-shifting situations. Dancing on the razor’s edge tires anyone out, and she is no different.

She looks at what used to be her plan. It was that Sam would cure Ginger, they would cook some more monkshood and cure her, and if he was bitten, cure him. Nobody would know anything about anything.

Now, Brigitte reconsiders: Sam is out there being a far cry from a bare-minimum functional human being, Ginger is fucking _dead_ and they’re all stuck in the basement of her own home with nowhere to go, and no means to go nowhere with, no plan, and no practical application of their cure, a fucking carcass of a creature modern science would break its back to explain in the room and... and... and...

Full stop. Nothing before, nothing after.

This is the point where everything stops, everything just stops for a moment. The world pauses its turning so Brigitte can wrap her head around what she can do, what she must do and what she can’t not do.

She decides to break it down to requirements. She needs Sam semi-functional, or just enough to drive, because they need to get back to the greenhouse. She also needs to make sure nobody finds Gin... the lycanthrope. The best bet seems to be to bury it somewhere, and for that, they need the van, and for that, she needs Sam. Brigitte tries to navigate around that particular requirement, but something inside of her confirms time and again that Sam is non-negotiable.

_(I’ll bet he is!)_

Some parts of her like to think of his presence as a foregone conclusion.

Brigitte sits next to Sam, waiting for his breathing to slow down to normal, even breaths and counting up from twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen... She watches him, this time without restraint. She’s tired, in that moment, of hiding behind her hair or the leverage of their common problem and just wants to sit and stare at him.

Sam McDonald. Botanist extraordinaire, main drug dealer of Bailey High who believes in lycanthropes. Who blasts Glassjaw when parking next to teachers. Who doesn’t shirk from her, who doesn’t belittle her, who doesn’t act like a stuck up asshole around her, who doesn’t... a slight flush colors her cheeks and thank fuck for all the blood coloring them already, who doesn’t hound her.

_(I do not think of you that way.)_

Don’t you sometimes wish that you would, she wants to ask, but he can barely breathe enough to live, let alone answer her. So Brigitte puts her hand on his waist and feels him tremble underneath her palm. Her fingers move in small circles, caressing him, as if trying to comfort him.

Poor Sam. Broken because he was there for her.

_(you cannot try this alone.)_

_(and don’t you sometimes wish that I could..?)_


	3. Recovery

Sam finally manages to sit up. His body feels like it’s been through the grinder, as if his final memory of teeth sinking into his neck ended prematurely and left out the part where the teeth broke in his skin. His every move is a new kind of pain, sending signals across muscles he didn’t even know were connected that way.

He turns to his side and there he finds Brigitte, her eyes wide open, watching him with what is either idle curiosity or fearful fixation.

“...” he tries to talk, but all he can manage is a croaking hum that feels drenched in phlegm.

Brigitte springs to action. She gets on her knees and slides over to him.

“Don’t try to talk, your throat is still pretty fucked. Can you stand?”

He’s not sure, but how to relay that to her, he’s even less sure about. So he shifts, his hands slide across the blood and he pulls his knees up. Brigitte gets on one knee, bracing herself. A thin, skeletal hand slides under his arm to give him a lift.

Together, they rise. Sam wobbles, his balance is still a bit off and his head only halfway on, but Brigitte helps him stand.

It takes a full fifteen minutes for him to be able to walk. Without a voice or even a passable gait, he sort of shuffles along after Brigitte to her room. The bedside lamps are the only source of illumination, and he can barely see anyway... but it doesn’t take much light for him to see the lycanthrope’s carcass. It’s just a slab of dead flesh now, pure muscle and tense sinew all sprawled up on the cold, concrete floor of the room.

Sticking out of the mass is a knife, a shiny point in a sea of blurred, pale-light shapes.

“...” he tries to speak, but his throat still isn’t accustomed to making actual sounds. The hoarse hum he manages captures Brigitte’s attention, whose wide-open green eyes look on.

What can he use..? Oh. That’s right.

He makes a writing gesture and points at his throat. This springs her to action. Sam watches her as she navigates the room, finds what she's looking for and returns with a pen and a pad not five seconds later.

Sam grabs it and sees that both of his hands are coated in blood. Hoping not to wet the paper before he gets a chance to write, he forces his shaking fingers to grip the pen and scribble, with a barely-legible font:

**What do we do now?**

* * *

Brigitte braces herself as she goes up to the first step. The stairs leading up to the house will carry, she hopes, the weight of both the carcass and herself. She holds the body by the front legs, using them as a leverage point as she lifts it, ascends one step, repeats until the hunk of flesh is halfway up.

She takes a moment to catch her breath. She’s sweating like a fucking pig, her shoulders are aching and she’s itching, from head to toe.

Brigitte remembers something that Ginger said, something she believed she had made up: that the dead bodies are so heavy because all their lives are now in them. If so, she’s dragging along burdens, but they aren’t Ginger’s. They’re her burdens, always have been, always will be.

This body, the boy-sans-cooties downstairs, the body in the shallow grave in the shed and the infected, living body of hers are all burdens of Brigitte.

She has to carry them.

Heave-ho.

* * *

Sam doesn’t quite recognize this asshole looking back at him. He looks like he just got through swimming in a butcher’s lake. His hair is all fucked up, his clothes are a few stitches shy of indistinct rags and there are huge fucking teeth marks that he swears heal a bit more every time he re-checks them on his neck. Who is this?

( _he’s a stupid, paranoid drug addict who wants to be a hero)_

Some part of him thinks, _yeah, you thought you would be playing it cool in the party because you didn’t have a costume – now you not only have the look, you’re_ living _the part. Happy Halloween, fucker._

Sam returns to the room. Standing there, he feels like he is in a temple or a chapel - some kind of place of worship. There’s a sanctity here he can’t quite place or understand, coating in the room. This is where they died, Sam knows, but he’s not sure if this is where they lived.

* * *

Brigitte finds Sam standing in the corner of the room, aimlessly looking around. She can’t help but notice that he’s better by the minute, and in the time she spent carrying the burdens of her late sister, he has picked himself up.

_(he’s not bleeding anymore, right? Just... spare him you finding out)_

Too late.

She lingers, unsure how to call out, how to announce her presence. She knows that she was sort of just _there_ when he came to. All the other times, she just walked in and started to talk. It’s different now, this is ( _used to be, like everything else, in the past, gone and done)_ her kingdom.

“Sam.” She says, prompting him to turn.

“H... hey...” he manages a hoarse whisper and his face shows that forming that single syllable hurts him considerably.

Another moment of hesitation. Deep breath.

“Look, this can’t go both ways, there’s only one way to go.” Brigitte says.

“You got a...” blood in his throat, blood and wounds, “...plan of some kind?”

“Yes. I already loaded G... the lycanthrope to the van. Are you good to drive?”

“...yeah. Think so.”

“You take her out to the woods, as deep as you can go. Bury her. Mark the grave. That’s important, we need to know where she’s buried.”

_(and be careful out there – there are things in the night that we didn’t even suspect)_

“You..?”

Brigitte looks around.

“I’ll clean this up... somehow.”

* * *

Sam, without a choice, stumbles up the stairs and into his van. With shaking, slick hands he turns the ignition. As the engine roars to life, he wonders if he’s in any shape to drive.

The carcass sitting in the back reminds him that it doesn’t matter – he doesn’t have a choice.

* * *

Brigitte thanks the years of research into everything death-related as she slowly spills the cold water from the plastic bucket and onto the blood. There are two ways to do this: one is to use Clorox to bleach the stains. Brigitte knows that for this to work, there’d have to be stains and not pools of blood on the ground. After soaking up the still-liquid portions in rags and depositing the rags into a garbage bag, she has an ocean of stains in her hands, leading from the lycanthrope’s mark to the hallway.

The second option, then. A shitload of lye. Thank fuck for Pam’s fastidiousness, there’s multiple containers of Gillett in the pantry.

Pam. The thought jumps through and screams, loud and clear.

_(Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit shit, how did you, you stupid fucking...)_

Pam.

Brigitte stops pouring the water down and jumps to that aspect of tonight. Pam, waiting in the car, or, if Brigitte knows her mother at all, Pam not waiting in the car, possibly mixing into the party and oh God...

Full stop.

No.

_(God I hate our gene pool)_

Clean the blood first. Whatever wreck Pam creates will be salvageable.

Brigitte gets back to pouring the water.


	4. You're My Alibi

Sam finds it a strangely specific blessing that his left arm is somewhat stronger than his right. It's nothing specific, just that being right-handed means he abuses that one more. Of course, he also has the problem of having a mangled shoulder from being bitten _(don’t think about that, don’t even think about it)_ but, that’s okay. He can still use the spade like a motherfucker and right now, he needs that. Six foot is a long way to go with only one half of one arm functional.

While digging, he keeps an eye on the beast. The first sign, from what Brigitte told him, is healing. He’s living, breathing, barely-talking proof of that – he doesn’t want it springing to life and pouncing on him.

_(just as long as you’re prepared for that, and I mean, sure)_

Sam shuts up, not that he has much of a choice in the matter, and digs down.

* * *

Brigitte is spreading the drain cleaner on the final stretch of blood, the one leading from the kitchen closet to the basement door, when she hears the front door open. She quickly checks the room and finds it a total fucking mess – the fridge door’s been torn off, there are utensils everywhere, not to mention the obvious blood she’s trying to clean. She’s fucked, and she knows it.

“Pam?” Henry’s voice. Brigitte doesn’t know if she should relax or panic more. She can hear him constantly going “What the-“ and getting closer.

“I’m in the kitchen, dad.” Brigitte says, and continues with her cleaning. Best to just go at it like nothing’s nothing – anything else won’t help, and she still has some work left.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Henry take a step into the kitchen and freeze. She stands there, watching as he examines each piece of damage and then looks at her for an explanation.

“It’s kinda hard to explain.” Brigitte says, not knowing how else to put it, “A lot’s happened.”

“You know what?” he says, “I don’t want to know. That’s it, this is... I’m done. I don’t know where I went wrong, or what I did, but this is it for me. I don’t want to know.”

Brigitte watches her father for all intents and purposes strut past her and head upstairs, to his room. She knows that this means one thing, that he’s going there to collect some clothes.

 _(Fine, leave. Like everybody else, leave me to clean up the mess, leave me to pick up the pieces.)_

* * *

After she’s done, Brigitte gives the surfaces a once-over, places the cleaning supplies where they are supposed to be, and heads out. Shutting the door behind her, she doesn’t feel like she’s leaving home – just a house. The house that the Curse tore down.

Henry’s left already. Brigitte wonders that with Pam God-knows-where and Henry gone, if she’s an orphan of sorts now.

_(god, I hate our gene pool.)_

* * *

Brigitte almost falls asleep, sitting on the steps of the front door but the headlights of Sam's van snap her right out of it. She stands up and the first thing she feels is that her knees are on the brink of giving in. She feels exhausted – every muscle is aching, her thoughts are barely coherent and she’s hardly keeping her head straight.

She gets in the van and sets the monkshood branches that she spent the last half hour frantically looking for on the dash.

The feeling of Sam steering the van away from her home and towards the greenhouse allows sleep, wretched and inappropriate, to crawl up to her again. Her head hangs slightly out of the open window and the wind caresses her scalp. Outside, Bailey Downs floats on by, the streetlamps going a few shade orange to hide the dark circles underneath. People sleep, safe in their houses, safe as houses, unaware of the horrors outside.

“You okay?” Sam asks, his voice barely a croak.

“Be quiet and drive.” She says.

Sam drives and Brigitte feels far away, somewhere in the distance, where the night is warmer and she doesn’t have miles and miles to go before she can sleep.

“You okay..?” Sam asks again.

“I’m fucked. We both are.” Brigitte responds.

“Anything else happen while I was gone..?”

“Henry came home.”

“Henry?”

“My dad.”

“You call your dad by his name?”

“He calls me by mine.”

“How’d he take it?”

“He didn’t. He decided this was it, that he couldn’t take it anymore. I think he’ll be well out of Bailey Downs by the time I go back there.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say. He was always shit when it came to things like this.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? The f... you’re sorry? _You’re_ sorry?”

“I just...”

“Spare me your guilt, Sam, you’re the last person who should be sorry right now.”

“It’s not guilt, it’s just... you know what, I don’t know. I don’t even know.”

“...it wasn’t your fault.”

_(something happened on the way to heaven)_

“So, we get to the greenhouse and get cleaned up, and then...”

“No. You work the party.” Brigitte says.

“Look like a fucking crime scene, how am I supposed to-“

“Tell them it’s your costume, that I was helping you set it up. You need an alibi, and I need one worse than you do – people actually saw me come in, noticed me, and saw me leaving the party. If you were with me, and you were mostly at the party, and I was with you, then I was mostly at the party too.”

“Fine. Then what?”

“I need to find my mom. Last thing was I saw her before I dragged Ginger out for you to shovel her in the face. I hope she’s still there.”

“She was at the party?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll bring us around back. Hope nobody’s sober enough to notice we weren’t there.”

“Once we get through all this, that’s it. We wait the party out, we use the last of the monkshood to cook up the cure. When the smoke clears, we’ll see how everything plays out.”

“You know, you’re too smart for your own good.”

_(just not smart enough.)_

* * *

Sam takes the long road around the greenhouse and brings them out back. The noise of the party, the sheer, garbled mess of it is dissipating into the air and Brigitte cringes at the thought of going in there.

Sam takes the branches of monkshood and they get off. The back door opens to Sam’s living room, through which, Brigitte knows, there is a way to reach his bedroom without going through the crowd. Sam hurries along, Brigitte in tow. He unlocks the door, they both rush in, he closes it behind them. They go straight for his bedroom. Sam reaches for the lamp on his desk and lights it up. Right underneath it, Brigitte sees bags and bags of weed, small ones, large ones.

Sam turns his pockets inside-out. No blood, thank fuck. He starts stuffing the bags in them.

“What’re you doing?” Brigitte asks. Sam glares at her.

“This is how I am at the party. I need to deal. All I need is ten, maybe fifteen minutes and I am at the party all through the night. That’s all I need, ten minutes to save face. I’ll be in and out. In the meantime, you can find your mother. We’ll meet back here.”

Sam decides that his pockets will rip if he tries to put in more, so this’ll have to do. He has about twenty, twenty-five bags, which should be plenty.

“Let’s go.” He says. He comes up and offers his hand.

“What?”

“We’re supposed to be together, yeah? So, this is how everybody knows.”

Brigitte can almost laugh.

“By holding hands? What are we, five?”

“Brigitte Fitzgerald with the drug dealer cherry hound. That’ll leave an impression. Sure, not the best one, but...”

“Fine, let’s just get this over with.”

Brigitte’s hand slips into his and their fingers interlock. They walk closer to the screaming music and each step of the way, their grip on each other’s hand grows tighter. After what seems like a death march, they emerge into the mess of bodies. The music is pounding, screeching. To Brigitte, none of them look coherently human anymore – their costumes distort their appearance, and with it, their reflections appear as ideas to her. Her head is swimming.

She doesn’t even know if Pam is in this mess.

The first to notice them are two girls, a vampire and a cat, which stop them dead in the midst of all that gyrating. Next, the solo guy in a cow costume next to them, and the trio next to him, and it follows a similar order until most of the people within visual range are observing them.

Sam bends down to Brigitte’s ear and whispers.

“See? You’re my alibi.”

Brigitte can’t even reply. She feels naked.

Sam’s hand squeezes hers, as if to reassure.

Brigitte can see them from an outsider’s perspective. 1522. Her 15, his 22. The cherry and the hound. Sam’s latest conquest, the little Fitz-sister to follow in the footsteps of a recently-blossoming Ginger.

_(so, sluts run in the family – quel shocker)_

Sam whispers again, bringing her back to earth.

“Let’s split.”

“And if I find my mom?”

“My room. The plan still goes in both cases.”

Brigitte freezes when she feels Sam’s fingertips on her chin. He gently turns her head and she follows his lead to suddenly find his lips pressed onto hers.

It’s a gentle, soft kiss, his lips barely there. It registers as a strange, though not entirely unpleasant feeling... hell, who the fuck is she kidding, it feels good, full stop.


	5. Gone Gone Gone

Sam remembers that once, half-drunk and on the wheel, he tried to persuade the police officer that pulled him over to let him off the hook in exchange for some grass. That particular attempted and failed deal was less speedy, less sloppy, less slippery and somehow definitely less solid than the ones he is doing now. After Brigitte’s slinked off, he’s left with a crowd of outstretched hands and bills folded into neat squares and triangles.

He doesn’t even see their faces, he just flashes them the bags. They like it, they pay, it’s done; they don’t, he passes on. No contact lasts more than twenty seconds. He has greetings from people all around him, he smiles and says a what’s up or two, playing it smooth, whatever it takes to get his face around the party and to deal to as many people as possible.

He doesn’t even count the money, he just sticks the bills into his pants’ pocket and that’s that. Thank you, come again.

One of them even stops him to ask him if he can break it up. Break it up into what, he doesn’t have time to break it up into a pay-per-gram basis, does this asshole have any idea how much of a pain that is? No. It’s what Sam has or a night without grass, which nobody opts for.

Once he sweeps the entire greenhouse, he heads back into his room. On the way, he sees Ben Coleman and Tim Manners, Jason McCardy’s asshole friends. One of them is dressed up like the devil, chatting up some drunk girl, and the other, dressed up like a cow, is sipping on his beer.

Sam extends his twenty-second contact and has them roll him a joint in exchange for a nickelbag. Tells them that all the fake blood crusted on his skin, now _that_ he didn’t anticipate, so he doesn’t want that shit getting in the weed.

Once he has the joint, he rushes to his room. Nobody’s in there, the sheets don’t look disturbed, which means nobody quite found it yet. Thank fuck.

Sam closes the door and locks it twice. He needs this, he needs it.

_(nothing takes the edge off like a good toke.)_

He takes a puff. Another. Ahhh.

Now, work to do.

* * *

Brigitte navigates the sea of bodies, moving from one gap in the pulsating crowd to the next, her eyes searching the mess of different faces to see one that belongs to her mother. She pushes and prods and elbows; and is pushed and prodded and elbowed along the way. She systematically clears the clusters from one end of the greenhouse to the other. Then, the only thing left is to go outside.

Brigitte goes to the driveway. There are a few people there, including two couples attached at various places, but...

Her mother’s SUV is still there. Brigitte rushes to it and looks inside. She’s not there.

_(gone gone gone)_

Brigitte feels the entire day weigh down on her shoulders. To quote Henry, she doesn’t know where she’s gone wrong, or what she’s done, but this is it. She's burned out.

_(you should be out there in the streets, not here)_

Brigitte goes back inside. 

* * *

Brigitte enters the room full of the smell of weed smoke and finds Sam on his work bench, holding a very small steel pan over a candle. He doesn’t notice her enter. She closes the door behind her and locks it. The sound of the lock alerts him. He looks up from the cook-up.

“Hey. Find her?”

“No. She’s gone somewhere. I don’t know where.”

Sam doesn’t say anything.

“...have you been smoking?”

“Thought that’d be obvious.”

“Can I have some..?”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

“Sure, if you want. I figured you should be the sober one.” he says.

“What was wrong with your sobriety?” Briggitte asks as she takes off her coat.

“Couldn’t cope that way.”

“Is there enough monkshood?”

“For both of us? Yeah, I’d say there is.”

Silence. Brigitte fidgets.

“Why did you do that?” she says.

“Do what?”

“Kiss me.”

“To make it believable.”

_(just go for the show)_

Silence.

“Look, Brigitte, this isn’t grade school - like you said, just holding hands isn’t anything. I had to give them something, something to push aside any doubt anyone might have had.”

“Great. You’re the cherry hound and I’m... the cherry, I suppose.”

“The only way it works.”

_(I do not think of you that way)_

Brigitte says nothing.

“Besides, we can be here all night and nobody would come to look for us. Far as they’re concerned, we’re fucking right about now.” Sam says.

He stops abruptly, as if just figuring out that he has actually said what he heard himself say.

_(you pervert! She’s fifteen!)_

“Sorry.” He says, clearing his throat, “The weed and the blood loss talking.”

Brigitte rolls her eyes.

“How do we do this?” she asks.

“I do you...” Sam clears his throat again, “Then you do me.”

“Whatever.”

“Lie down. It’s about ready.”

As Sam prepares the kit, Brigitte lies down on his cot. It carries his scent, Brigitte can’t help but notice. Cigarettes, lye whiskey, something like coconut soap and tired nights. Brigitte almost smiles as she ties the double-helix shoelaces around her arm and pumps her fist. Sam hits where the vein is a couple of times.

The dim, yellow light hanging from the ceiling brings a sickening luminosity to the room. It reflects off the surface of the gleaming needle, sharp and ready.

Cold metal, alien and painful, penetrates pale skin.

Red, seeming black, mixes with the thick purple.

Inject.

Brigitte feels the monkshood spread from her arm throughout her body, branching across the network of veins embedded into her. It brings pain, pain from her heart to the tips of her fingers and toes, pain that makes her twist around, held only by Sam’s hands.

A lapse of consciousness. A blank in her perception.

And, just like that, leaving behind an almost unnoticeable after-ache, it ends. She breathes in, exhales and opens her eyes.

There he is. The light above is obscured by his head, and it looks like a halo.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

She smiles.

“Wicked.” she says.


	6. Tangled Up in Plaid

Sam wakes up, his throat aching slightly from the night before but otherwise okay, to the comforting feeling of a warm body next to his. There's a thin waist under his arm, very firm hips against him, a soft breath, a lot of hair scattered on the pillow and holy shit that’s Brigitte wearing little more than her underwear, much like him.

_(I slipped)_

Sam blinks a few times, trying to get the crust out of his eyes.

_(Didn’t mean to do it that way)_

He sees that they’re all tangled up. She’s grabbing his left wrist with both of her hands, his arm is draped over her. Their ankles are all tangled up, their legs are interlocked.

The greenhouse is silent but only for a moment. The phone in what passes for his living room goes off, prompting Sam to groggily launch himself from the cot and towards the door. He barely manages to clear the threshold, hearing the phone ring a second time, before he practically pounces on it.

* * *

Brigitte wakes up to the pleasant scent of the bed and the wonderful weariness spread through every muscle in her body. Her cut hand is aching, through and through, as if it went down to the bone and it needs a bit of time to heal.

From her fingertips to the tips of her toes, she feels absolutely _sore_.

Awareness starts to set in and she notices, with an exponentially increasing shock that she’s actually in a semi-familiar room. In his bed. In her underwear and oh no. No. Shit. _Shit._

Brigitte digs into her memory. There’s a very suggestive and very dangerous gap where the interim between injecting Sam with the monkshood and waking up half-naked in his bed should be.

She looks around, her eyes darting from the skin mags by his bedside to the mess on the workbench to her clothes all neatly folded on a chair. She gets up and hastily puts all them on – every layer of clothing makes her feel a bit more like herself. She’s pulling her hair out of her sweater when Sam walks in.

“Oh good, you’re up... and dressed.”

What?

“...what?”

“We need to go down to Leland Street. They arrested your mom last night.”

“How did you-“

“Someone at the party pointed them in my direction.”

“What did they arrest her for?”

“She confessed to killing Trina.”

* * *

Sam drives. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Brigitte staring at the mobile scenery around them. He wants to say something, anything, but there’s too much he wants to say that it’s all stuck in his throat. Questions, comments, rants and accusations roll around his tongue, but he bites it and drives.

Brigitte, next to him, appreciates his silence in her own, silent way. There’s so much that fills her mind: plans, templates, scenarios and realities... She can barely contain them all. The only comforts she have are the dull ache of her body and the friendly silence of Sam.

_(he wants to help. He’s not like the others.)_

* * *

Pam looks genuinely surprised to see Brigitte on the other side of the bars of her holding cell. Brigitte’s fingers snake around one of the bars. Pam clocks the guy she knows from school grounds on the corner. Wasn't he the gardener or something? Well, whatever he is, he seems to be her chaperone, which, Pam decides, is still better than what her girls actually did.

“Mom.” Brigitte says, and there is only one question to ask, “Why did you do it?”

Pam knows the actual question, but she also knows that they are watching her. Anything to implicate her daughters _(daughter, Pamela, Ginger’s gone and you know it, so be honest with yourself, fuck a shade of orange)_ is unacceptable. Un-fucking-acceptable.

( _your grammy was very stupid)_

“To protect you.” Pam says, and finds herself smiling inside at the answer. “From those girls. I don’t want you to end up like them.”

“Like what, mom? What is it you thought I would be like?”

“Like those empty-headed, boy-crazy blondes. You know what I mean better than I do.”

Brigitte can’t say anything to that. She chooses, instead, to use the ever-watchful cameras in the room to her advantage.

“Ginger’s gone.” She says, “She took off. I don’t know where to.”

“Will she be okay?”

_(no, mom. Ginger’s dead. She will never be okay again)_

“Yes.”

Brigitte sees Pam relax, as if knots scattered throughout her are slowly coming unraveled before her eyes. Pam takes a deep breath, exhales. Her hand closes over Brigitte’s. She squeezes, as if to reassure.

_(I was supposed to protect you)_

“Mom, I...”

“He seems nice.” Pam says, “Is he nice?”

Brigitte looks at her.

“He’s...” nice isn’t the word, what is the word, “...nice, yes.”

“You’ll have to take care of my daughter while I’m gone.” Pam says, over Brigitte. Brigitte doesn’t hear a reply. “She’ll need your help.”

“Mom...”

“She won’t need it too much.” Pam says, one hand reaching out to touch Brigitte’s cheek, “She’s...”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I’m so proud of you.”

“Mom, I...”

“No.” Pam says, “Not a word, Brigitte. You go now, go with him. Let him be nice to you. I’ll be fine. Maybe this way I’ll... I don’t know, find God, maybe? I’ll be fine.”

Brigitte stifles her tears, mumbles a goodbye and follows Sam out. Detective Wallace Rowlands is waiting for them. Once the door is shut behind them, he leads Sam and Brigitte through the police station, his hands in pockets and his gun holster empty. Around them, the scent of paper fresh from the printers, cheap aftershave and even cheaper coffee lingers, swimming in the surge of noise.

“We’ll be detaining your mother here until we get clearance to transfer her.” Rowlands said, “Do you have a place to stay?”

Brigitte glares at him.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“As of this morning, your house is officially a crime scene. We’re still waiting for the warrant to go through to strip it down, so to speak, but until then, you or anyone else without a badge isn’t allowed in.”

Brigitte can feel her heart pounding in her temples. She knows from experience that it doesn’t show (she has a tell, but only Ginger knows what it is,) not really. Her blood is running cold.

“So, do you have a place to stay?” Rowlands asks again.

Brigitte feels Sam’s hand on her shoulder and can’t help but jump a little. The memory of his lips plays again in a flash.

“She’s staying with me.” Sam said.

Rowlands raises an eyebrow but lets it slide without comment.

“Anyway.” He says, “I’ll try to persuade them to let you in to collect your clothes and things. It might be a day or two before that happens, though. Sorry.”

_(Who needs clothes when you have evidence?)_

“We’ll figure something out.” Brigitte says and tugs at Sam's sleeve. Sam takes the hint.

* * *

Brigitte is silent on the way to the damaged van, but Sam is watching her closely. Sharp, short steps, boots pounding the pavement, arms crossed, her hair almost completely obscuring her face, like a bullet determined to tear right through the vest and find flesh. Like a bullet aimed at the world.

Sam gets in, sticks the keys in the ignition and waits. He doesn’t have to wait long. All it takes is for him to fish out his pack and light up a cigarette.

“I have a problem.” Brigitte said.

_(I’m turning into something totally else)_

“Lot of that going around. So what’s it this time?” he asks with a lopsided smile.

Brigitte looks daggers at him, but only for a second. She sees that he means no malice. Her expression softens quickly and she averts her gaze.

“Come on.” Sam says, “Tell me.”

“I need to get to the house, to my room.” Brigitte says, “There’s stuff in there that the cops shouldn’t see.”

“What stuff?”

“Diaries, poems, notes from the games we used to play, plans for the death project...”

Sam almost chokes on his cigarette.

“Whoah, whoah.” He says, “What’s the death project?”

“School project. Slideshow.” Brigitte says, rolling her eyes, “Nobody really died.”

“Except for Trina.”

Brigitte nods.

“That’s exactly why we need to go. If they find them, if they find the notes, they’ll know...” she holds her tongue just short of the last few words, but Sam has already snapped to, and is looking at her. Brigitte takes a deep breath, “They’ll know that Pam... she didn’t kill her.”

She counts the beats, unable to look at him. She expects an explosive reaction, a blowback.

“Oh, fuck me... you’re kidding.” He says, “When I said, things must happen, this wasn’t... oh shit.” He throws away his cigarette and runs a hand through his hair, “Okay, okay.” He murmurs, “Tell me something. Who else did you kill? Because there’s no way Trina was it.”

Brigitte hesitates.

“Mr. Wayne.”

“Who the fuck is Mr. Wayne?”

“The guidance counselor.” Brigitte says.

“Anyone else?”

“The janitor.”

Sam sighs.

“Okay.” he says.

Brigitte glares at him. That’s it? Just okay?

“There’s just one problem.” Sam says, “The cops must be over there right now. How will you get in?”

_(Help me)_

“They should be out front. I can get in through the back. There’s a window, low enough that it’s not obvious, but large enough that I can squeeze through. I’ll be in and out. Five minutes, tops...”

“And, if there’s someone in the back?” he asks.

“Out by sixteen.” Brigitte blurts out, before she can stop herself.

Sam raises an eyebrow.

“I’ll run.” she says.

“Where?”

“Just... run. Get out of Bailey Downs.”

“How?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Take your pick.” Sam says, “There’s a lot of places we can go, well, except for Alberta. I am _not_ going there.”

Brigitte’s mouth hangs open.

“Sam, you...”

“Don’t even think about it.”

_(how about you take this and we blow)_

“You don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything more.” Brigitte says meekly, “You’ve done more than enough already.”

“It makes sense.” Sam replies, putting his hands on the wheel, “Think about it. Rowlands just heard that you were staying with me, hell, we were in your mother’s cell together. Everyone at the party saw us together. You are my alibi. And then there’s the whole cherry hound story...”

Brigitte can’t help herself.

“Did she..?” she manages.

“What, Trina? As if. She came by the greenhouse a couple of times. We talked. She tried to get me to roll one up once or twice. Then, one time, she walks in, it’s business as usual, and she just jumps me. I stopped her before she could do much of anything, and showed her the door. A week later, I show up for my usual gig and I’m the cherry hound.”

“So, nothing happened...”

“She wasn’t all that bad, you know.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

_(‘cause she’s dead now, dead and lying on an autopsy table, waiting to be dissected)_

“So... wanna go now, to check it out?” Sam asks.

Brigitte smiles. Sam feels something quiver in his chest. Her sunken eyes, her pale skin – she looks like she has just taken a beating and he pulled him out of the thick of it. She’s broken and she’s grateful, and it breaks his heart.

Her voice pulls him out of it.

“You’re the driver.” she says.

* * *

Sam drives up Leland Street and then straight into the gridlock of Bailey Downs homes: two-story, red-brick houses with front lawns and separate garages, all looking hollow and cold in the autumn morning. Bailey Downs seems to be resting, trying to recover from the previous night. Sam can’t help but feel that despite the soothing sleep of the monkshood cure, he’s still extremely tired. He pretends not to notice Brigitte dozing off in the passenger seat, tempted, himself, to just pull to the side, turn the engine off and join her.

Not yet. There’s still some ways to before they can both rest.

* * *

Brigitte wakes up to the gentle prodding of Sam’s fingers. Groggy, she reaches for Sam's pack. She shakes off the stupor with half of a cigarette. She glances outside, to see where they are. They are behind her house, concealed partially by the picket fence.

"We're here." he says.

"You got a bag or something?" she asks, "There's no way I can get everything without one."

"I have one in the back, where I keep the long tools. Wait."

Sam twists, turns around and reaches into the back. Brigitte waits. She hears tools being tossed, their metallic clang sounding like gunshots. Finally, he sits back down, dragging a dusty, but sturdy, duffel bag.

"Here you go." he says.

Brigitte takes it and gets off. She circles around the van, notices that the grill is still busted, and when she makes it to the other side, Sam says:

“You don’t have to go in alone.”

“You don’t know where anything is. You’ll slow me down.”

His silence is pronounced. She can see that he doesn’t agree, and feels as if she has wronged him with that. She stumbles, tries to find the right words, but she doesn’t have the time.

“Thanks anyway.” She says and goes. She begins to feel for the two loose planks. There they are. Brigitte lifts them up, crouches and checks to see if there are any cops. Thank God, no. She adjusts her duffel bag, slips through the gap and disappears. Sam lights a cigarette.

“Don’t mention it.” He says after her.

* * *

Brigitte quickly crosses the distance and gets to the low window. The entrance to their room, or, as they called it, the Emergency Exit. Ginger’s, and hers. Brigitte recalls a game of Post-Apocalypse, where they shut their door and pretend the world had ended outside and they were the only survivors and all they had was each other.

_(No. No time to dwell. Concentrate. This isn’t the time. This isn’t the fucking time.)_

She finds the window and gets on her hands and knees, and then on her stomach to look inside. Through the dust and the smudged stains on it, she can see that nothing has changed since the last time she’s been there, which means they haven’t gotten in yet, which means they haven't found anything yet.

Better yet, they’re not inside.

Brigitte tests the window to see if it’s locked. It isn’t. She opens it, and then turns on her stomach to get her legs in. Her skirt moves up and the chill of the room on her bare legs makes her shudder.

She slides in through the window and finds herself in an ocean of memories. It feels like going to a museum where the artifacts on display are basically pieces of her life, stray fragments lining the walls.

Too much detail. Too much past. Too much substance. Too much reality. Too much for her.

The room becomes, has to become, the space between the artifacts she’s looking for. The objects themselves, her goals, are all that matters and the rest, all of the rest, she’ll return to later, when she can dwell. 

* * *

Leather-bound journals, two of them, the latest ones. Hers, black cover, neat. Ginger’s, a fucking mess, the little string holding the cover together popped off.

A note pinned to the wall, on Ginger’s side, directly above the bed: _Death is an underrated art. I do it especially well._

Folders under both beds, outlining favourite methods of death.

A manila folder filled to the brim with the suicide methods in the death project.

The notebook in which various games of Search and Destroy are logged.

The suicide notes for the death project. The polaroids, including the one of the lycanthrope.

The knife that Ginger used to try and cut her tail off. The knife that killed her. The murder weapon.

Norman’s dog tag that she can’t believe Ginger kept by her bedside.

_(Fuck’s sake, Ginge...)_

Spare underwear.

No time for actual clothes. No time at all. Only time for some of the most essential things before it is time to slip back out and meet the limit of her planning.

Brigitte reaches for the window’s frame and pulls herself up. She remembers a suicide note they used for the death project. Shemiles after the fond memories and thinks, _I am leaving this place forever, without thoughts, without hope, without work._

* * *

Her duffel bag now heavy with the pieces of her life, former, Brigitte climbs back up and out through the window. She quickly moves towards the loose planks. She lifts them up, pushes the duffel bag through, and then slips through herself. Upon seeing her, Sam throws away his cigarette and starts up the engine. She opens the passenger side door, pushes the bag in and climbs in after it. She slams the door shut.

Brigitte feels as if until that point, she was holding her entire being, her mind and body in knots, wound up tight, and now that the limit of her plan is reached, now that everything seems to be in place, each knot is unraveling. Her body refuses to hold out. It gives in.

“Got everything you need?” Sam asks.

Brigitte nods.

“Let’s go back.” he says.

“No.” she says, “We have one more stop to make, after we swing by the greenhouse.”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

“Where’s that?” he asks.

_(Take me to where it all ended.)_

“Take me to where you buried Ginger.”


	7. They All Do It The Same

Ginger’s burial site is easy to find. Sam explains to Brigitte on the way that he buried her somewhere that was easy to find after, just in case the knife to the heart thing didn’t quite take. He remembers where he parked before going into the woods clearly: he’s bent the sign and scraped some of the paint off of it by damn near crashing into it. Brigitte is glad there weren’t any cops around then – it’d be hard to explain the blood and gore covering him from head to toe.

Then again, Pam would probably say she did it because he was looking at her wrong.

_(you’re both my babies)_

Brigitte shrugs it off. Pam is a sore spot now. Years of wondering if she had deserved the ire she and Ginger had piled on her, as if to see how much she could take, frustrated by her obvious obliviousness and wondering if there was more to all that... to finally find that there was.

_(one more thing you took from me, Ginge, one more thing I can’t replace now)_

“Brigitte, hey.”

Brigitte blinks and suddenly, Sam exists.

“What’s wrong? Look, we can just go back, do this another day.”

Brigitte shakes her head.

“You sure?”

“Yes.” Brigitte says, “I have to see it for myself.”

“Alright.” He shrugs, “I’m just the guide.”

_(he’s a paranoid drug addict who wants to be the hero)_

Sam leads, Brigitte follows.

* * *

The digging takes it out of her. The ground is damp, sucking moisture from the air, and it’s easy to dig, but every time the shovel sinks in and more earth is extracted from the closed wound, Brigitte feels her heart beating faster and faster. Her head is a movie theater playing a psychotic mashup of every single werewolf film she’s seen, and the common thread binding them: the death of the monster. Every time the monster dies, the corpse reverts to its human form, to who the monster used to be.

Sam is unusually quiet and his silence isn’t fucking helping.

In her mind’s eye, she sees Ginger lying there, half-buried in the earth, worms slithering across her pale skin, naked, pale, cold, dead but still her, still her sister, still the Ginger she used to play dying games with, still the Ginger she wanted to die with.

_(you give up now, you leave me here alone, I would never do that to you)_

_(but you didn’t give up, you gave in, and all I have left now is him)_

“This should be it.” Sam says, “Nearly four feet. Shallow grave.”

Brigitte glares at him through sweaty clumps of hair.

“Sorry.” He says. He puts down his shovel and gets down into the open wound. He starts to dig with hands. Brigitte stabs her shovel into the ground and leans on it. She lets him do the work. Isn’t that how it goes, anyway?

* * *

Gradually, Sam uncovers the corpse. Brigitte’s heart is a war drum, sounding the alarms, hailing the arrival of consequences. She almost can’t even look at the grave, but she knows she has to, so she does.

All she sees is the lycanthrope. All she sees is what the rotting slab of meat used to be.

All Brigitte sees is death. You know, that thing she was once so excited about.

* * *

Brigitte returns to the van. She gets in and sits there. She pulls a cigarette from Sam's pack of 3 Aces and lights up. She smokes three, back-to-back. It feels like inhaling less than air. As she smokes the third one down, Sam emerges from the trees, dragging two shovels behind him. He goes around the van and puts them in the back, onto the pile of tools. He then slips in next to her and closes the door. She’s halfway through her third cigarette. He lights one up himself.

“You did everything you could.” He says, “And I do mean everything. Somebody else would’ve gone down the Remington road long before you didn’t give up.”

Brigitte doesn’t say anything.

“This isn’t a pep talk, just so you know.” he adds.

“Noticed that.”

“So... what now?”

_(how should I know? why does everyone expect me to know everything?)_

“Can you take me home?” Brigitte asks meekly.

“Sure.” Sam says and starts the van.

* * *

The road is silent. They move through the anonymous background decoration of Bailey Downs, now quiet as a graveyard. Brigitte can practically hear the sound of silence.

* * *

Sam parks and follows Brigitte into the greenhouse. Without breaking stride, she heads to the living room, and he tails. She sits down, sees a pack on the coffee table, pulls a cigarette out and looks around for a lighter. He lights hers, and then his own, and sits next to her.

Silence ensues for a few minutes.

“So.” He says, “What now?”

“We play the waiting game.” Brigitte says, “The investigation means school’s out, so nothing for me.”

“Nothing for me, either. Not unless someone needs gardening done.”

( _without the greenthumb, I’d be a total waste of space)_

“...Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I stay here?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Where can I sleep?”

“Well, there’s only one bed, and I know from experience that it’s not a very good idea to try and sleep on that couch. And from what I can tell, my bed can handle both of us... so, one choice, really.”

He looks to see her glare, but can’t judge it to be anything.

“I’ll behave.” He says.

“Thanks...” she replies.

* * *

Brigitte slips in next to him and he gives her a generous amount of space on his bed. She curls up in a ball and remembers the nights when mind-fucking nightmares woke her up and she snuck into her parents’ bed. She remembers thinking that, whatever shapeless monstrosities were there to plague her sleep, her mother’s stubbornness would be enough to kill them all in one fell swoop.

Brigitte waits for Sam to fall asleep. Then she cries.

* * *

The waiting game quickly gives way to routine on the second day and they develop a talent for navigating around each other, as well as into each other. Brigitte likes it. She hides her little smiles behind her thin fingers and her hair. Sam’s not sure. He doesn’t do a good job of hiding it.

The third day is vague, indistinct. For Brigitte, it takes place between waking up and going to bed, both to the tune of Sam’s breathing. For Sam, it takes place between the burning in his throat from the last sip of rye and the last cigarette of yesterday, and the burning in his throat from the last sip of rye and the last cigarette of today.

The fourth day is when Brigitte wakes up to the heavy, sharp smell of 3 Aces in Sam’s hair, mixing with the semi-clean scent of the pillowcase and the faint whiff of rye whiskey, and finds herself liking it. Finds herself sporting what she thinks is a genuine smile. Finds the pain of Ginger’s absence less – it’s still there ( _sisters, we’re forever_ ) but it’s lighter, somehow. She feels a warmth in her stomach and worries that she’s coming down with something. When she listens to him breathe, she understands. He’s alive. He’s alive and with her, and she’s alive, too.

The fifth day is when Sam, upon returning from the very strange job of trimming someone’s bonsai with what he thought was a pair of nail scissors, finds Brigitte in the living room, curled up on the couch, asleep. He’s surprised at how sudden the urge to just grab her, slam her to the floor and fuck her brains out is. He drowns it out in half a bottle, four cigarettes, and a shuffle. He returns later to fulfill his other need – to throw a blanket over her and hope not to disturb her sleep. Perhaps, he thinks, it’s because when she’s asleep, she curls up in a ball, tucks her hands under her chin and breathes softly. She looks vulnerable. Like she’d break if he touched her. So he doesn’t.

The sixth day is silent. They don’t speak, each one preternaturally aware of the other.

And on the seventh day, everything changes. 

* * *

Sam steps into the greenhouse, still trying to shake the week’s end off of his shoulders, and finds Brigitte occupying her usual station: on the couch with a book in her hand. He doesn’t quite understand what she gets out of reading up on botany, especially anything about poisonous plants, but she’s taken that up, and it’s her way to deal, he knows.

“Hey.” He says.

She looks up from her book with those gorgeous green eyes...

_(why? why would you do a thing like that?)_

“Hey.” She says, “What’s up?”

“A job here, a job there. People are still too preoccupied with the whole murder investigation thing.”

“Can I help?”

_(you don’t have try this alone)_

“No.”

Brigitte hangs her head. That does it for him. He bends down and kisses the top of her head. She tenses up under his lips. He withdraws with the last of his strength and finds her looking at him. Sam wants to say something as they look at each other and silence lingers, to say anything. He’s fully prepared to spout bullshit about a completely random thing, to create conversation, to put words in between himself and her... between himself and himself.

Brigitte leans towards him, her tongue tied up behind her teeth.

Her fingers find his coat, grab the collar and curl up.

Brigitte smashes her lips against his and control, such as it is, disappears into the air. She props herself up to her knees as Sam shifts his shoulders and discards his coat. Brigitte’s fingertips find the small gaps between his shirt’s buttons as one of his hands finds the back of her neck, moves up and grabs a handful of her hair, keeping her in place.

She pulls the shirt apart, sending buttons flying everywhere.

Her lips part and their tongues dance as she rips his shirt open, her strength surprising even herself. But this need that’s burning in her, this absolute, urgent, desperate fucking need for the sensation gives her the right of action.

The way he pulls her head back, slides down and with a surprisingly restrained bite, kneads her flesh between teeth tells her that he has the right of action also.

She shivers in delight, her head starting to swim, submerged in delight and a stray thought asks: was this how Ginger felt?

Sam takes a moment to rush his way through her top – she lifts her arms and he pulls out her sweater, long-sleeve and most of her bra all at once. She corrects him as he shifts his belt away. Returning the favor, Brigitte takes this moment to remove her skirt, and her panties, by which time Sam is down to his underwear, barely.

She almost leaps out at him, and he grabs her as she licks his neck. He loses his balance and falls to the ground. The impact shakes her. His teeth rattle in his skull.

Brigitte stops for a moment, just a moment... before giving in.

_(they all do it the same)_

Her hand trails across him and meets his just around his cock. He’s on the verge of losing himself, she knows, because he is as hard as he has ever been, and she is dripping with the force of her need.

Brigitte drives her hips down, sinking onto him, sinking him in deep, feeling him drive into her, in turn – it’s then a moan escapes her lips and she finds his shoulders. She lifts her hips up, and then down again. She remembers in that moment her utter contempt for this baser instinct, for this cog in the breeder’s machine.

They all do it the same, in the end and so will they, she feels, as his hands lower her onto him and his teeth find that soft spot between her shoulders and neck.

Sam holds her firmly in place, a fistful of her hair constantly in between his fingers, his other hand securing her hips in place as he pounds her, slamming himself again and again and again into her with all of the ferocity his body can muster. It’s merciless, basic, ugly and desperate, but teeth clenched, her screaming in his ears and her teeth breaking skin on his neck, her fingernails drawing blood, he gives into his drive, and drives her along.

“ _Shit..._ ” Brigitte exhales through clenched teeth, _“I f-fu-fh-fucking hate y-you... sh-shit...”_

Sam screams wordlessly, by pushing her beyond what he can’t even feel that even he isn’t capable of and driving her over the edge.

Inside, he’s screaming.

( _good. hate me. fucking hate me. that’s what I get. that's what I)_

Brigitte can feel her body shaking, warmth, beauty and bliss spreading from his point of entry and across her entire body. She clenches on him, grinding, catching him and with small thrusts, invites him along – he stiffens up under her. Brigitte doesn’t release and he comes, holding onto her.

A necessary end to it all comes in the form of hard breaths strung up in a row and the sense of the world that had all but disappeared in the rush, return.

* * *

The world recedes, the world closes in, recede, repeat, until Sam finds himself lying on the floor, deflated now and almost too tired to move, a mess... a fucking mess...

Brigitte reels herself in, barely scraping out the parts of her and finds that everything got confused. She’s all tangled up, tired and shaking still, a perfect wreck.

In the brief respite from the maddening rush of it all, shame crawls back in.

Brigitte looks at the marks on Sam’s body, her nails and teeth. Small red spots, some of which are actually bleeding a little. Her scalp hurts from where he pulled her hair, she’s aching all over... and there’s something drying on her inner thighs... The moment freezes and her awareness of what just happened expands and expands until it takes over her.

Brigitte slowly rises, to her knees first and then, as he tries to squirm out from under her, to her feet. Once she finds her balance, she runs out of the room and leaves him there.

* * *

Sam looks on after her as she abandons him, then and there. He’s still barely coming to and becoming aware that he still has his boots on, that his pants are around his ankles. He sits up, reaches down, and pulls his pants up.

There, with them unbuttoned and his belt undone, he listens to the hum of the room, briefly interrupted by the sound of the bathroom door slamming home and asks himself just what the fuck that was.


	8. Doubt

Brigitte enters the bathroom and slams the door closed. Her breath is caught in her throat and she’s gasping for air. Her legs feel like they can give out any moment. She feels the exertion straining through her and hates every single second of it.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck._

Not like this, please fucking God, _not like this._

_(I’d rather be dead than what you are)_

Brigitte feels her hands trembling. Her thoughts race, mixing up their paths and shriek as they fly in every direction – all just to move towards one simple thought: she feels unsafe from herself.

She makes it to the sink by some miracle. She can barely contain herself. It was her first time. It was her first time with Sam. 

Not that she had anything to compare it with, but it didn’t feel terribly bad and that’s more or less what nice is, in the end. But this, all of what just happened was pure hormonal toilet stuff, a mindless, brainless fuck-drive that coated everything else into itself.

_(he wants to get down your pants, stupid!)_

It is this thoughtlessness that drives her to think: was this how Ginger felt? Brigitte isn’t sure. Was this what she felt, this aching need for sex?

How long, she wonders, before it is replaced by the need to tear things to fucking pieces?

_(it feels... so... good...)_

Brigitte looks at the disgusting creature in the reflection. She’s used to considering this thing, her various flaws and shortcomings, but tonight, she looks at her differently.

Tonight, she sees the monster. It’s got these little, green eyes and it’s staring right back at her, cruelly defiant. It’s a self-righteous look, filled to the brim with betrayal. A monster, with twigs for limbs and visible ribs to count under sickly pale skin.

Brigitte clenches her teeth, her jaw shaking with anger. She fucking hates her, hates the monster that took her sister, hates the monster she’s becoming... that she is... that she always was...

( _kill yourself to be different, and then your own body fucks you)_

A scream gets knotted up in her throat and Brigitte snaps.

Her fists crash into the body mirror and crack it. She keeps hitting, hitting, drawing blood and finally breaking it to fucking pieces. She kicks the ground, slicing open her foot and screams, screams and screams, unable to get it out, unable to vomit forth all that brought her to that point, all that she carried with her.

Brigitte Fitzgerald and all her burdens are finally unleashed.

Ginger, suicide, surviving, Sam, stitches, the lycanthrope, the Curse, the Pact, Pam, it’s all too much, just too much.

She holds the wall and swings her head forward. Her teeth rattle with the impact and she growls. No. This _fucking wall_ isn’t going to stop her, these fucking _walls_ won’t contain her, fucking _nothing_ will, nothing except for the arms that are stronger than she ever could have known.

* * *

Sam grabs his own wrist to keep her in a lock.

“Brigitte!”

She finally snapped, he thinks.

He pulls her away from the sea of shards underneath them, but she turns and kicks the wall, sending them both back. He feels the sink counter dig into the small of his back, clenches his teeth and tries to keep her steady.

“Brigitte! Hey! Hey hey hey, calm down, just... stop fucking kicking, damn it...”

She slows down. She gets heavier and he struggles to hold her up – funny how a waif of a girl weighs so much when her legs can’t support her.

_(you don’t have to do this alone)_

He can’t see her face. It’s hiding, as it always does, behind her hair. He can, however, see her hand. It’s cut open something fierce and bleeding.

“Jesus Christ, Brigitte...” Sam can manage.

Cope, damn you, he scolds himself, this isn’t... just do something, do something about it.

With one hand, Sam reaches to the vanity mirror above the sink. He pulls it to the side and retrieves the iodine. He takes some cotton. “Show me your hand.” He says, “If there’s any glass stuck in there, it might-“

“It’ll heal.” She says, sniffing, “It’ll _heal_...”

She sobs. Sam uses the split second between that and her starting to cry to pull her in and hold onto her, as tightly as he can.

He catches his own reflection in the vanity mirror, and all he can see is some guy who has no fucking idea what he should do, because he knows that there’s nothing that he can do. He sees a loser, tired, a fucking mess, a dead-end nobody trying to make it look like he's worth anything.

In the mirror, Sam sees a man who can't even save himself.

* * *

Brigitte feels everything slowly spill out of her eyes and her mouth. All the while, even as her knees buckle and she sinks to the floor, he is there, holding her.

She feels, somewhere beneath the raw emotion cascading out of her that this is wrong. She has no right, no right to just let him do this, let him help – not after everything. Not after what she said, what she meant. Not after getting him killed. Not after condemning him to the same fate the Curse always brings: horrible, horrible Death that she once thought could be this beautiful, wonderful thing.

He should let her go and run as far away from her as possible. But instead, there he is, holding her.

_(no-one knows it but he saved me)_

Brigitte cries herself right into unconsciousness. Sam wants to get up, to get to the bed. The greenhouse is probably one of the warmest places in Bailey Downs, he knows, so they won’t freeze during the night, but they can’t just...

But he feels spent. There's nothing left in him.

He can’t, he just can’t.

Sam feels that he’s back in that dark hallway again, lying in a pool of blood and looking at her for help.

He can’t carry both her and himself. Not tonight.

Brigitte appears to be sleeping soundly, her body shivering every once in a while. She’s curled up against Sam, and she steadily breathes, her mind in the blessed respite of dreamlessness.

Her own thoughts circle in that unconscious blank.

_(cold, but I’m still here. You left me here alone, Ginger. You broke the pact. You left me to the wolves. And here I am, and my only friend is the cherry hound, because he’s here for me... and you’re not even around.)_

* * *

Sam wakes up to the cold, linoleum floor of the bathroom, to the feeling of the shards of his mirror under his arm. His body feels like it’s been through the grinder. He stands up, balances the world and tries to form a coherent thought.

His first thought is his worst thought: wait, where the fuck is Brigitte?

Another: what if she ran away?

No. He quickly dismisses it. She doesn’t just run when things get tough. Hell, if she had, he most probably wouldn’t be there, forming this coherent a thought. So it follows that she’s still there.

He steps out of the bathroom and turns towards the living room. That's when when he sees her. Brigitte Fitzgerald. Hunched over, arms crossed. Wearing that thick, turtleneck sweater and that long skirt. Face obscured by long, long hair.

He hesitates. So does she. The silence hangs in the air for a moment and it’s shy, unsure. In a way, this is their hello. They are new.

_(well hel-lo, hello, hello)_

“Hello.” Sam says.

She doesn’t look at him as she answers.

“Hey.”

She feels that she’s back to square one. She doesn’t know how to talk to him, make conversation. Sam, in turn, decides to default to basic necessities.

“Are you hungry?”

Brigitte looks at him then, her green eyes _(gorgeous green, concerned green, beautiful green)_ full of confusion.

“...yeah.”

“Then how about we angst about all of this over breakfast?”

Brigitte hunches her shoulders and crosses her arms. She brushes past Sam, her eyes on the floor and her face barely visible through a curtain of hair. Sam follows her. He remembers the first time they met, when Ginger and her new friends were smoking – how she couldn’t look him in the eye, how she kept fidgeting... and then, the second time when he had returned her photograph, the same song and dance; the way she couldn’t get out of there fast enough...

To someone that withdrawn, that isolated, what happened last night, he figures, must be more shocking that it is for him. With some degree of sick satisfaction, he thinks that he’s finally earned his name. There, he’s hounded cherry and popped it to boot. He’s officially the Bailey Downs Cherry Hound, exactly as advertised.

_(Trina was right. I really am an asshole.)_

He goes into the kitchen and silently starts preparing breakfast, aware, all the time, that he can still taste her.

* * *

Brigitte munches on the piece of French toast and has to admit that she enjoys the taste of peanut butter. There’s enough adornments on her plate to feed an army, she thinks, but what interest her the most are the bacon and the salami. She decides to stay away from those.

Sam, on the other hand, somehow manages to both smoke _and_ eat.

“So,” he says in between a drag and a bite, “...about last night. Guess saying that’s like, the best way to get things rolling.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a cherry hound.”

_(do you see me chasing small turnover girls who can’t even spell lycanthrope, never mind know what it means?)_

“I’m not! Look, I don’t know how it happened, it just... happened. I don’t know, alright?”

“ **I** know how it happened.” Brigitte says, “And that’s the problem.”

“I mean do we really need an excuse to-“

“We’re infected.” Brigitte says.

Sam stops. It’s a curious sight, he just _stops._ Not a breath, not a motion; for a single moment, he just stops functioning. When he resumes, he drains the cigarette for all its worth and says:

“That’s... holy shit. Holy fucking _shit..._ but... but I thought you said it worked... d-didn’t you say you used it on somebody else?”

It’s Brigitte’s turn to stop, because she then remembers the one thing she forgot.

“Oh, shit...” she says, “I did. Eat up. We gotta go.”

“What?”

“We gotta pay a visit to Jason McCardy.”

“McCardy?”

“He’s the one I dosed, and if we’re...” she bites her tongue, “...like this, he should be having some complications right now.” 

* * *

After a breakfast literally forced down their throats, they grab their coats and head out. Once again, Sam takes the wheel, but this time, he only watches the road.

Brigitte can’t help but focus intensely on the non-descript streets of Bailey Downs, but no amount of engine noise can drown out the sound of her thoughts.

_(mom... what do boys want?)_

* * *

Standing in front of the house McCardy, Sam shifts his weight from one foot to the other and decides to light another cigarette to wash down the previous one. Brigitte fidgets, sighs, rolls her eyes, but can’t bring herself to move, either.

“Give me one.” She says, rubbing her back with one hand. It hurts from both the ( _not the sex, no, not it at all, I’m thinking about something totally else, I’m thinking about something like)_ sleeping on the bathroom floor and _(not on top of him, in front of him, beside him)_ kicking and screaming.

“This isn’t one of your better ideas.” Sam says as he lights hers and passes it on.

“Neither were any of the others. You just weren’t paying attention.”

“Got us this far.”

Brigitte doesn’t feel inclined to argue. She takes a drag and then _(another one of Ginger’s burdens that I have to carry)_ knocks on the door. Every second feels like a second too long, and after seventeen exact seconds, that felt more like five minutes that contained a lifetime, the door opens, revealing a very disheveled mother.

Brigitte almost takes a step back from the sight. Bags under her eyes, shoulder-length hair looking like she was electrocuted, cigarette, halfway burned, dangling from her lips. Uh-oh. This isn’t good. This isn’t even in the neighborhood of good.

“Afternoon, ma’am.” Sam says, with a politeness and sense of decorum that makes sure Brigitte’s jaw is locked in place, “We’re sorry to disturb you. We are friends of Jason’s, and...” he hesitates momentarily, seeing her expression shift from a pronounced weariness to urgent despair, “...well, he was supposed to meet us today and he didn’t show. We were wondering if he was sick or something.”

“Do you know where he might be?” Jason’s mom asks, “He hasn’t been home in two days, I... the police are waiting for it to be three days so that they can look for him, I... have you talked to him?”

“We had arranged to meet about a week ago, actually, so we really haven’t...” Sam says, and Brigitte can hear his voice quivering.

_(yeah, I really wish I was hairy and hemorrhaging and sucking off Jason McCardy)_

Brigitte wants to turn away and run. Run like hell and never look back, be _(out by sixteen)_ done with it all. She can’t, damn her, she can’t.

She can’t leave him here.

* * *

They return to the van after a show of brilliantly choreographed excuses, synchronized lies and an exchange of phone numbers just to put the ribbon on top. Once there, Sam kicks it into gear and stomps on the gas. He rushes through the streets, easily now that there are still very few cars around, and the look on his face tells Brigitte that he’s got a target in mind.

“Slow down!” she says, “You wanna get pulled over?”

“We have to get to the greenhouse.” He says, “And after that, we have to find a craft store.”

“For what? More monkshood? Why bother?”

“Maybe the dose was wrong. Maybe we’re supposed to OD on it, I don’t fucking know, okay? Just give me a sec.”

“What’s at the greenhouse?”

“I have a Winchester. Family heirloom. Looks like we’ll need it.”

Brigitte thinks about it.

_(search and destroy, go.)_

_(Jason McCardy. shot once in the head and twice in the chest while slowly turning into a lycanthrope. courtesy of following his dick blindly into my dead sister.)_

“...if nothing else, I’d rather take a bullet to the brain.” Sam says.

_(Sam Mcdonald. killed himself with a gunshot to the head, the rifle kiss. He died because his life got fucked by Brigitte Fitzgerald, after she got fucked... by him and literally.)_

“But after all that, we gotta find the asshole.” Sam continues as he takes a sharp left and then a wide right, “And hope he’s still somewhat human.”

 _(Brigitte Fitzgerald. she wanted to die, sort of. when she didn’t, she found out that she could do nothing_ but _die, that living was not an option. not anymore.)_


	9. House of Wolves

“Alright, I’ll get the rifle,” Sam says before his body is halfway through the front door, “You get us something sharp. There’s a lot of that around here. Just make sure I didn’t forget to sharpen it.”

Brigitte has to admit that the thought of killing Jason McCardy as a first step to recovery sounds a bit too right for comfort.

Sam locks the door as Brigitte moves down the hall and into the bathroom. She turns on the faucet and Sam isn’t two steps from the door when the door is knocked on. First with the knuckles.

Then with a fist.

* * *

Brigitte sticks her head out of the threshold of the bathroom and sees that Sam is frozen in place. The knocking continues, each pound on the door harder and more forceful.

Sam retreats towards the door. Stands a step away.

“Who is it?” he asks. Brigitte’s fingers grip the threshold tightly.

Another knock and the door flings open. Sam jumps a step back to avoid it and as the door crashes into the wall, he sees who it is.

_“Hello, Sam.”_

“Oh... shit...”

His mouth is parted slightly, revealing gleaming, sharp canine teeth. His skin is breaking into uneven blotches – it looks like dried up soil, with fault lines emerging from central points. He looks like he hasn’t seen the light of day, or a shower, or a shave in weeks.

_“I hear Brigitte’s here. Hear she’s staying with you.”_

“Jason... what the fuck happened to you..?”

_“That’s what she’s gonna tell me.”_

* * *

Brigitte quickly gets out of the bathroom and moves to where Jason can see her. The quicker his impotent temper is diffused, the better.

“We’re not sure.” she says, “We tried the same thing I used on you. Didn’t work so well, either.”

 _“You both look fine!”_ Jason says, _“I had to work overtime on making excuses, just to keep my parents from dragging me to the hospital!”_

_(know what I did for fun last night?)_

“Have you killed yet?” Brigitte asks

Sam glares at her.

 _“No.”_ Jason says, _“Not this time.”_

Silence. Jason looks at Sam.

 _“So...”_ he says with a feral smirk, _“You two, huh?”_

“What?” Sam says, with more force than Brigitte likes.

_“She gave it to you?”_

“No.” Sam says, “Ginger. She bit me.”

 _“Where is Ginger, anyways?”_ Jason snarls, _“She won't call, she won't write.”_

“She’s dead.” Brigitte says.

_(she’s out by sixteen by virtue of being dead in the scene)_

_“...what?”_ Jason asks.

“I killed her.” Brigitte adds.

Jason moves and it’s too fast for Sam to catch. His fingers lock around Brigitte’s throat and shuts off her air supply completely. She grips his wrist, one hand reaching to his face, but he slaps it away.

 _“You’re gonna pay for what she did, you bitch!”_ Jason snarls.

“Jason, stop.” Sam says, “Stop before I put you down.”

_“Suck my dick, Sam!”_

Brigitte sees the move out of the corner of her eye. Sam throws a punch and for a moment, she notes that it’s good, but not that good. Nevertheless, she hears it crack. Then, it’s on. 

* * *

With a throaty growl, Jason shrugs Brigitte off and leaps at Sam. Sam only has time to lift his arm up before they collide. Jason drives Sam into the wall and starts putting weight on him, forcing him to take quick steps to the side to adjust. Sam grips Jason's filthy t-shirt for leverage, but its too slight. Jason tightens his grip and attempts to lift Sam, which is when Sam elbows his head.

Brigitte is coughing, leaning on the bathroom door, trying to catch her breath while, within spitting distance, the house of wolves eats itself alive.

Jason growls, both in pain and frustration, but doesn’t let go. He keeps pushing, and Sam misses a step.

“ _She fucked me over real good, and now I’m gonna fuck you both, and it’s all gonna feel that... much... better!”_

Jason shifts, forcing Sam to follow suit, but Sam can’t get a grip on him. The asshole is squirming, constantly attempting to push him down the hall, closer to the bathroom. Jason shifts again, tilts his head to the side, and as Sam winds up his arm to elbow his head once more, Jason’s teeth sink in.

Sam screams as he feels the canines pierce his skin and draw blood, and Jason’s jaw clamps over a mouthful of flesh. With both hands, Jason moves Sam a step back and Sam slips, an opportunity that Jason takes to drive him to the ground.

Brigitte leaps across the hall and into Sam's room. She looks around for something heavy, something reasonably heavy that she can lift. She spots the scales Sam uses to weigh his bags. She grips it tight and lifts it up, sending a tiny zip-loc bag flying off. With her newfound weapon, she steps onto the hallway.

Sam, grunting, elbows Jason’s head, once, twice, three times, four times, each time feeling his upper and lower jaw inching closer, almost crippling him with pain.

Brigitte inches closer. She raises the scales over her head, winding the blow.

The sound of something metallick shattering Jason’s head, which almost instantly makes his jaws release, is what brings Sam down a notch. Sam welcomes the slight reduction in the intensity of the pain. He manages to kick and squirm his way away from his attacker.

Jason just lies there like the dead.

"Is he..." Brigitte manages, her eyes wide.

"No." Sam says, "Fucker's still breathing. Fuck, come on. Get his legs."

* * *

Sam gets his torso, Brigitte gets his legs. He leads, she follows. Together, they haul Jason all the way across the greenhouse, outside and over a very short distance to a rather sturdy-looking shed. Sam digs into his pocket for the keys and opens the doors. Brigitte sees that it’s where he keeps his bigger tools, the shovels and the pickaxes. She also sees why he chose the shed: there’s a metal column in the middle of it, from which various gardening tools hang.

“This thing goes below the ground. It’s solid concrete down there.”

They set him down. He stirs.

“It’ll hold.” Sam says, “We need to chain him.”

Brigitte looks at Jason. His physical deformities are obvious but few. Longer nails to scratch things with. Sharper canines. Bags of pus all over his face, like acne out of control. Hairy palms. Brigitte can’t help but flash the ghost of the ghost of a smile at that.

“We can’t hold him.” She says.

Sam is nervously scratching at the bite marks on his arm. Brigitte glances at it.

_(it’s already healing)_

“Well then what?” Sam asks, “What do we do with him?”

Brigitte looks at Jason again. Sam shivers. Her face is blank, completely devoid of any sign of life whatsoever.

“We kill him.” She says, deadpan.

Sam’s eyes widen.

“I’m sorry – what!?” he asks.

“We kill him.” Brigitte repeats, “We bury the body. Everyone thinks he’s missing. They’ll think he skipped town. Nobody will know. It doesn’t matter one way or the other – he’s got the Curse. He’s as dead as we are.”

Sam stops picking at the healing wounds. He stops, period. There’s nothing in him that continues and if he’s breathing, he doesn’t know.

_(you like it)_

Sam grabs Brigitte by the arm and before she can react, he walks her out of the toolshed. He pushes her as he lets go, and she stumbles, but doesn’t fall.

“Get the fuck out of here.” Sam says, “Go back to the greenhouse, sit the fuck down and wait for me. I have to deal with this asshole first.”

Sam gets back in and closes the doors behind him. Brigitte hears the lock clack as it engages. For a few moments that seem like hours, she just glares at the toolshed.

_(and then he’s done... and you’re like, oh)_

* * *

It takes Sam ten minutes to emerge. He locks the doors behind him and pockets the key. Brigitte just stands and stares.

Sam lingers for the fraction of a second and then brushes past her. Brigitte considers breaking the door in, maybe there’s a pair of garden shears she can use... one sharp jab into the heart should do it, she can open the shears once they’re in him... she can see the blood gushing from the wound, all that lovely red going to waste to feed the worms and-

_(nothing helps except for tearing live things to pieces)_

* * *

Sam is almost to the van that got him into this mess in the first place when Brigitte catches up with him.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“I need to find more monkshood.” Sam replies, his voice cold, “Maybe it needs to be fresh to fully work, but we’re a ways away from spring, so I figure, if you can find some, so can I.”

“Craft store.” She blurts out, “Pam found them in a craft store.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

Sam opens the door and gets in. He turns the ignition.

_(say something you fucking idiot)_

The motor roars to life and before Brigitte can open her mouth, he pulls out of the driveway and down the road.

_(you fucking sissy little girl)_

* * *

Brigitte stares on after him, even after the yellow van disappears from her view. Standing in the driveway, shivering, Brigitte can’t believe what just happened. She doesn’t even have the words to frame it properly. Did they just... have a fight? Like, fight-fight?

The entire concept is too ridiculous to take seriously. A fight over what, exactly? A mercy kill? A euthanasia needed as much as a double suicide is right about now?

Search and destroy. That’s all there is.

_(I can’t believe I lost it to Sam)_

Brigitte feels her insides get twisted up. She crosses her arms and shuffles back into the house.

* * *

An hour passes. Brigitte fidgets, shifts, sits down, stands back up, paces, stops.

She doesn’t know what to do with herself.

Brigitte considers dwelling. The interim has given her time to catch her breath, get ahead of the ongoing apocalypse. But now, she realizes, she’s never actually thought about anything beyond that. She’s thought first of the Pact, then of running away with Ginger, then of saving Ginger, then of saving herself and Sam _(and so far I’m_ really _kicking ass)_ and then, suddenly, five minutes ago, all that’s left has become Jason McCardy tied in the shed and Sam giving her the cold shoulder.

First she wanted to die. Now she wants to... live? Maybe? Is it because she’s seen death up close, she wonders; because she’s seen the horrible truth of it?

 _(not ours, ours’ll rock)_

* * *

Brigitte goes to the living room and sits down.

Maybe the almighty, all-knowing educator will know what to do.

She turns on the TV.

* * *

Two hours pass, and Sam isn’t back. Jason is growling up a storm, the faint hum of which Brigitte hears, even through the droning of the TV. She tries to concentrate, but all she’s found worth looking at is a Z-grade vampires versus werewolves flick. The make-up work is decent, but the plot sucks, and there’s a human-vampire-werewolf love triangle for whatever reason that takes up more space than it should.

* * *

Three hours. No Sam. The movie ends and they all kill each other. Don’t you just love the very poor imitation of the sounds of nature?

_(where are you?)_

* * *

Four hours, twenty-seven minutes and it’s down to the Eldritch horror show of afternoon edutainment when Brigitte hears the van pull up into the driveway. The tell-tale sound of the door being slammed, and the rustling of nylon bags.

Sam kicks the door open and slips in. He shuts it with his heel and moves onto his room. Brigite hears him set down the bags and then rummage through them. His chair is pulled up. He sits down.

The moment his Zippo lighter’s clank is heard, Brigitte decides, fuck it, and gets up.

* * *

Sam lights the candle to begin prep. It’s not the most efficient way of doing it, maybe and he could be persuaded to kill for a Bunsen burner, but this is what he has, and it has done nicely so far. No different than heroin addicts cooking shit up in spoons, and they’re no different than a bunch of junkies shooting up flowers. Like crackhead hippies.

Behind him, on his bed are five bags filled with dried monkshood, more than half the stock of the craft store. The sixth bag has syringes, cotton balls and a few X-acto knives, just in case he needs to cut the petals with a bit of precision.

“Hey.”

Sam doesn’t look up. He knows she’s there. He’s seen her when he first got in.

“Hey.” He says, regardless.

“You found more monkshood.”

“Yeah.”

“You need... help with that?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

He can’t help but steal a glance. He sees her standing there, arms crossed, hiding behind her hair, but not well enough, because even if her face betrays nothing, her eyes tell a different story. Sam wonders what that story might be, but can’t get the deadpan tone of her voice when she suggested killing Jason and burying his body out of his head.

“I’m sorry.” Brigitte says. Sam looks at her, and sees that she’s looking away, at the ground.

She looks vulnerable beyond the telling of it and he remembers that he has forgotten that she is, in so many ways.

He takes a branch and presents it to her. She smiles. He sees the world slow down to give him a slow-motion demonstration of the saddest sight he has seen – Brigitte Fitzgerald smiles with her lips, and her eyes stay dead and desperate.


	10. Blind to Supernovas

It’s boring, repetitive work that involves a lot of waiting, time Brigitte spends clamming up and Sam wastes by smoking a joint. He offers it to her as well, but she refuses – she doesn’t want any drugs. That’s fine, more for him. In his mind, he’s thinking about the Winchester rifle tucked away in a place he alone knows, that he’s going to have to have her have it handy in order to have any semblance of security.

They prepare several syringes’ worth of monkshood. One is all they need to kick it off and the rest is for keeps.

Sam gets tired of the process quickly once his weed runs out. His body, he’s noticed, is metabolizing the shit with record speed. He glances at the puncture marks. The light, pinkish scar tissue flesh is there, but the wounds have closed and stopped hurting.

“So... what’s your idea?” Brigitte asks shyly.

_(mine were never good, just barely passable, just like me)_

“Easy." Sam says, "I give you the rifle, I inject him, we see how he does. If it doesn’t kill him and if he’s back to normal, we give him three syringes, tell him to take it when his symptoms flare up, but to keep an eye on the intervals.”

“That seems like a lot to ask.” Brigitte says, “Especially from him.”

“He wants to live, he’s gonna have to get smart. It’s either this or your idea, and excuse me for not wanting to write him off as another casualty just yet.”

Brigitte averts her gaze. She’s been expecting that.

_(living things make me sick)_

“And that’s without getting into our problem, which is that we’re gonna have to shoot up too.”

_(an overdose sounds like the order of the day, death is always on the menu and I used to be so hungry)_

Brigitte considers it. There’s an elephant in the room.

“And if we get worse?” she asks.

“I told you, I have some seeds.”

“ _If_ fresh monkshood’s even the answer.”

“What do you propose, that we hang ourselves right now?”

_(alone in the dark, the snow will cover my footsteps)_

Brigitte shakes her head. That’s a piece of Ginger she’s not ready to face or let go of just yet.

“One problem.” She says, “I don’t think I have the best aim. You should have the rifle. I’ll inject him.”

“I don’t wanna tempt him into growing a pair.”

Brigitte feels herself blush and wonders if he can tell. The slightest twitch in his eyes betrays his seemingly calm mask. She looks away.

* * *

Brigitte turns the key and the padlock holding the shed door clacks open, prompting Jason to go completely silent. Brigitte pockets the key and slides the padlock off. She grips the syringe like a knife and pops the needle cover with her thumb. She has a pair of garden shears in her other hand, held right above the handles. Better safe than lycanthrope chow.

Behind her, Sam is waiting, machete in hand, having abandoned the rifle due to neither one of them being crack shots in a pinch. Brigitte glances at him, one hand on the shed door and sees that he looks awkward and out of place with his weapon. It’s the will to kill, she notices, the intent. He doesn’t have it. She’s seen Ginger’s face, the way she looked after she tore the janitor’s heart to pieces. She knows what a killer instinct looks like.

Sam looks more like a scared kid putting up a brave front.

_(just go for the show)_

* * *

Jason McCardy is tied up good. Somewhat rusty but sturdy-looking chains tie his ankles to the post, rise up from behind it to snake around his torso, moving on to tie his hands a little bit above his head. There are several belts, borrowed from power tools (Brigitte spies a chainsaw and her mouth waters at the thought of it revving, the delightful sound interrupted by the sound of her mentally slapping herself) that serve as a makeshift muzzle that leaves barely enough room for his nostrils to suck in air.

His eyes are burning embers, flaying Brigitte’s skin with a mere look. Brigitte sees the symptoms a bit more clearly now that there isn't a life-or-death struggle going on. The blemishes are blossoming, his hair is longer than it should be and the canines biting into the leather are sharp.

“This is for your own good.” Brigitte says, “This is the cure.”

Jason growls a muffled, unintelligible protest. Business as usual.

Sam approaches from behind her and stands there, making sure Jason sees the machete. Jason begins to laugh. Brigitte lets him have his fun, because as the doomed victim laughs, the other victims remember the first time his life was ever a topic of interest.

_(you gave it to Jason)_

“Sorry, McCardy.”

Brigitte makes a move. Jason makes one right back.

* * *

The chains snap and Jason delivers a kick to Brigitte’s stomach. The wind is knocked out of her and she sees black spots dancing merry little jigs in front of her eyes as Jason tears off his makeshift muzzle. Jason’s boot collides with Brigitte’s side and snaps a rib, eliciting a scream out of her.

Sam doesn’t think, Sam swings. Jason instinctively lifts up an arm and the machete cuts him down to the bone, inviting blood to gush out of the wound. Brigitte feels it splash on her face and a few stray droplets leap into her mouth. Jason screams in pain and anger as Brigitte tries to ignore the pain erupting from her bruised kidney. Sam pulls back the machete. Jason immediately closes a hand on his wound.

“I don’t wanna do this, man!” Sam shouts, “We’re trying to help you here!”

_“You smug son of a-“_

Sam never learns what he’s a smug son of, because Jason is cut short by Brigitte jabbing the garden shears right into his leg. She shifts, agony coursing through her, reaches and wedges her arm in between the shears' handles. She thanks for once that she’s such a skeleton. Before she can open them, however, Jason falls back. His head hits the concrete pole with a loud crack, a crack that recalls, for Brigitte the memory of the first real corpse in the kitchen.

_(you're both so totally fucked)_

Jason’s body slides down, his cracked skull leaving a trail of blood as it scrapes the post, all the way down.

* * *

Silence.

Then, a word.

“Shit...”

Through clenched teeth, Brigitte breathes. She becomes aware of her lungs working overtime to make her hyperventilate. Trying to process what just happened.

The smell of blood in her nostrils is overwhelming. It's intoxicating. Just from the smell, she can feel a heat beginning to pulse between her legs.

Sam’s voice cuts it to size and brings back the pain of her rib.

“Oh, shit...”

_(he’s dead isn’t he)_

Brigitte moves, remembering one of many Ginger lessons in which she told her about the quirks of human anatomy. Like pulse, detectable right below the wrist and in the jugular, on right side of the neck.

Her broken rib makes her scream out at the slightest movement. She bites down on her coat and reaches out to check. Her fingers, like that of a professional ER doctor, find the spot immediately. Practice makes perfect.

There is no pulse. Jason McCardy is dead, she confirms.

Sam concurs:

_“Fuck!”_

For the briefest moments, half-blind from the pain, Brigitte expects to see supernovas, but all she sees is a starless, cold landscape, pitch black.

* * *

Sam, by reflex, lights up a cigarette. He gets down on one knee, just an excuse, to keep his right leg elevated so she doesn’t see just how fucking hard he is and he knows that if he wasn’t terrified out of his mind, he might dwell on how fucked that is. But as it stands, he’s scared shitless. His mind feels like a hornet’s nest on a collective sugar high, with every thought buzzing and bouncing off the honeycomb walls.

He notices that he still has the machete in his hand and wet blood is dripping off the blade and he has half a mind to lick that right up.

“We killed him.” He says, snapping to, as if he’s only now discovering the obvious, “Shit, we fucking killed him...”

Brigitte tries to stand or at least recover to a crawling position. Her hair scrapes the ground and soaks in the spreading pool of Jason’s blood.

Sam is still going.

“Fucking sh-“

“Shut up, I’m trying to think!” Brigitte hisses through clenched teeth.

Sam shuts up. Brigitte tries to think. They both end up staring at the body.

_(if we weren’t here, would we eat him?)_

* * *

“Hold off on the monkshood.” Brigitte hisses. The pain has lessened, but not to a point where it could be called manageable. Moving is a war. “I need to heal. We go with plan A.”

Sam glares at her. Brigitte notices that the curvature of his ears have somewhat sharpened.

“You inject.” She says, “I’ll stay. Come back when you’re done. We have to bury the body.”

Sam’s mouth opens and Brigitte imagines that it’s to protest. When she manages to speak, her voice is almost pleading.

“Just go, Sam.”

Sam drops the machete and turns, stumbles. Brigitte finds a position she’s quasi-comfortable in and lies there, staring at the trail of blood Jason’s skull has left on the post. For some reason, it seems like the most interesting thing in existence – it’s just that mundane at this point.

_(maybe even your final moment’s a cliché around here)_

* * *

Sam wakes up with a start and the bump on his head makes its presence known. Confused, he looks around. The familiar surroundings of his own bedroom seem out of sync. He looks at himself, just to get some perspective and sees that the syringe is still stuck in his arm. He pulls it out and tosses it somewhere that he knows he will find out about when it jabs him one night.

He looks at his hands and sees blood. In a flash, his senses return, dragging his memory along for the ride. He gets to his feet a bit too fast and gets dizzy, shakes a bit. He grabs a spare monkshood dose from his desk, pockets it and rushes back out.

* * *

He finds Brigitte right where he remembers she was. He crouches down to inspect her. Her eyes are open, just glass-like. Expresionless. She’s breathing. He can see streaks of tears on her face, having left clean trails across all the blood that's on her face, the blood that she...

“Brigitte..?”

She flinches. Tells him all he needs to know.

“Come on.” He says and grabs her arm. He lifts her up like she’s a rag doll, a traumatized rag doll with lots of issues to sift through. She’s lighter than she looks now, despite all the layers she has on. Careful not to touch her side, he sits her up.

“I have the monkshood.” He says.

Her stare is blank. He nevertheless takes the syringe out and demonstrates it. When she doesn’t react, he pulls the cap off with his teeth, puts the syringe in his mouth and proceeds to roll up her sleeves, plural. He’s aware that she’s watching him now, her dead eyes dead set on the sight of her would-be savior. Maybe in another life. He doesn’t remember a time when he felt more like a drug dealer than now.

There’s the coat, the sweater, the long-sleeve t-shirt, and when they’re gone, all he’s left is a pale arm with skin thin enough to let him see the veins – the rolled up sleeves provide enough pressure for it to be visible, though not to bulge.

The needle sinks in easily. She doesn’t flinch at it.

“I hope you healed enough.” he says

He looks up. She bends down and before he can react, kisses him, her free hand coming up from behind him to hold the back of his neck, holding him in place. He lets her, and as they kiss, he presses the plunger down.

* * *

Sam carries Brigitte back into the greenhouse. She weighs a bit more when she’s asleep. He sets her on his bed. He doesn’t drape the quilt over her, as there are quite a few layers on her already. She curls up in a ball, turning to her side and drawing her knees to her chest. He makes a mental note to tweak the dose a bit – can’t have them passing out every time they have to dose.

Her lips part and she whispers:

“Ginge...”

Sam stands there, tired, weak and beside himself and knows that maybe he wasn’t meant to hear that.


	11. Brigitte and Sam Understand Each Other

Brigitte opens her eyes to the now-familiar wall of Sam’s bedroom. She’s sore all over. She recalls waking up naked in the bathroom next to an equally naked Sam, as this feels like that kind of sore. The comfortable presence of her clothing tells her otherwise. The crusted blood coating her hands and clinging to her mouth tells her that she has bigger problems. It overwhelms her in that moment and she swings her legs up to get up. She rushes into the bathroom, coat and all and turns on the cold water.

She takes the bar of soap and starts scrubbing, heart pounding in her ears, disgust rising inside; disgust that she hopes won’t pour out of her mouth. She scrapes off layers and layers of skin under the freezing water, hands shaking, little pins and needles tap-dancing on her, from her wrists to the tips of her toes – the sting, she can feel under her fingernails.

Brigitte looks in the mirror. She sees the dried blood coating her face, covering it like a mask. Jason’s blood. Dirty blood.

_(boys have cooties, those are infectious)_

Her hands are shaking, burning from the inside. The sound of the water running slowly phases out as the world gets muffled under a thought absolute. Something Brigitte knows to be true.

_(I’m turning into something totally else)_

* * *

Sam digs. This feels familiar. Shovel, dirt, approximation of six feet, ‘cause you don’t want things in shallow graves, they have a tendency to crawl right back up and haunt you. So might as well dig as deep as you can but still, for your own sake, make it shallow enough to take it easy. You never know when you might have to check to see if the dead have stayed dead.

He knows, because even as he digs, his eyes are on the nearby grave, the less fresh one. Rotting in it is the same nightmare that’s followed him around ever since he inherited the greenhouse.

The thing that won’t leave Brigitte alone until she’s dead, he knows.

This gives him pause. He takes in his surroundings, as if he’s just woken up to them. Deep in the woods, next to the marked grave, shovel in hand, blood drying on his face, recalling the memory of soft, full lips, warm and full of promise. The grave’s almost done and underneath a tarp in the back of his van with the busted door lock, he knows, is the corpse of the same kid he’s sold dope to for years.

Sam wonders where everything went so wrong. Something inside of him knows the answer.

_(well, officer, it looked like a lycanthrope to me, sir)_

Sam tells himself to shut up and dig.

_(we all turn into our parents, in the end)_

* * *

The greenhouse is home to many things. Sam. Sam’s things. His weed stash. Other plants that he sells or grows for the fuck of it. His triple beam scales, now a makeshift weapon. Porn mags (which she will admit to having gone through, ending up in a strangely detached place.) Some smaller plants.

They make Brigitte remember the time when she fucked his black orchid project by speaking out at precisely the wrong moment. The memory makes her blush, if a little.

She remembers that she didn’t know how to start a conversation, hell, she could barely hold one when he had done it earlier. He had wanted to know her name, maybe that’d work. Maybe just telling him her name would get him to start talking so she could react to him, not act on him.

_(he doesn’t want to know your name, he just thinks you’re a stupid kid, just a sissy little girl just like Ginger says you are)_

But she remembers the disdain in his voice when he said that we all turn into our parents in the end.

_(this place is the family crypt)_

Not quite the greenhouse itself, but there’s a small path that leads a little ways into the trees – a secret tunnel, out in the open. There’s a patch there, an opening and there stands a marble headstone, at which Brigitte is now glaring, as she nervously smokes a cigarette.

**GILBERT & LYNNE MACDONALD**

**LOVING MOTHER AND FATHER**

**BELOVED SON AND DAUGHTER**

She hears Sam’s van pulling up in the driveway and hurries out of there, as she suddenly feels that as out in the open as this was, she isn’t meant to be there.

* * *

Sam is getting off just as she makes her approach. He looks tired and his face is still bloody, unlike hers. Hers is red from being scrubbed to the bone under ice-cold water. She takes a huge drag from her cigarette to shut up for two seconds more.

“Hey.” He says, “Well, good news is, Plan A worked.”

“Is there bad news?” she asks.

“I’m going to have to invest in real estate at this rate, because I think we can get away with it that way. Y’know, you knock ‘em down, I set ‘em up... 'cause who the fuck cares what I do in my own backyard, right?”

The smoke sours in her mouth. Oblivious, Sam lights one up.

“So anyway.” He says, “You got it. Kid’s dead. What’s left now is anybody else Ginger fucked or, swapped blood with or, y’know, just generally existed in the near vicinity of in these past few weeks. So if you know anybody, now’s the time t-”

She packs a whallop for such a small girl, Sam discovers, as Brigitte back-hands him, sending his cigarette flying out from between his lips.

Sam feels anger, white-hot, rising. Maybe it’s exhaustion, maybe it’s the virus or whatever, but he feels it.

“Shut up.” She says, “Just shut up. What do you know about it? Before all this, you wouldn’tve looked twice at me and now suddenly I’m your alibi _and_ your scapegoat? Spare me your indignation, Sam, it’s not good on you.”

“Who do you think you are?” Sam’s voice is little more than a whisper, steadily rising. “Before you came along, my life was there! Sure, it wasn’t fucking great, but it wasn’t an ongoing train wreck either! How about now? Have you looked at how fucked it’s gotten lately, not to mention - I’m burying the bodies here! At least with Trina, I _knew_ I hadn’t killed anybody! What about this shit!?”

“Did I force you into this or something?” Brigitte asks, “Did I hold a gun to your head? You came along for the ride ‘cause you figured if you played the hero, you could get in my head, and then you could move it along and _fuck me_! _I don’t think of you that way_ , my ass! Well you did fuck me, Sam, you got your cherry, and that’s it for you! You’re done! Trina was right about you, and you know what? So was Ginger!”

The look in his eyes when he finally looks at her bounces right off the rage she’s feeling in her veins; but if it could get through, she’d see, for the first time her in life, what it looks like when she hurts someone. Some part of her registers this and reminds her of all the times she was hurt.

Her hands are shaking and her heart is pounding in her temples, but Sam seems calm as death as he replaces his cigarette.

“Sure.” He says, “Yeah. I’m the cherry hound. That’s me. So don’t stick around. Go. Tell the cops, tell whatever housewife knitting group or whoever the fuck it is you’re gonna tell. I’m done with this shit.”

Brigitte feels her anger fall to pieces as the last sentence hits home.

“Your stuff is here, it’s safe. Take it if you want, I don’t care. Take half of the monkshood. Then fuck off, we’re done.”

* * *

Brigitte follows Sam into the greenhouse and then into his room. When they get in, he takes off jacket and goes to his desk. He starts sorting through the stuff as Brigitte lingers in the threshold. He makes two piles, distributing the goods equally – one for her, one for him, one for her, one for him.

Brigitte stares at the toes of her boots. She knows that sight well, because that’s what she sees every time she doesn’t know what to do. She has reached the limit of improvisation and she knows it.

“There.” Sam says as he adds an X-Acto knife to the pile on the right, “All sorted.”

“Sam, I’m...”

_(a bitch, a tease, the innocent girl next door)_

Sam moves to his bed. He reaches for the bedside drawer and pulls out a bag of weed.

“I’m sorry.” She says.

_(your life went to shit the moment I didn’t want any drugs... but what about my life? what was so wrong with my life that this feels like home to me?)_

“I’m really, really sorry.”

_(Ginger’s gone, Pam’s gone, Henry’s gone, Trina’s gone, Jason’s gone, everyone is gone gone gone)_

“I’m just freaked.”

_(nobody else nobody)_

“I didn’t mean it. What I said, I-I didn’t-“

“Are you gonna bullshit me all day, or are you gonna go?” Sam asks, looking up from his rolling papers and at her.

_(this is a wall of shame moment)_

“...I have nowhere to go.”

Sam’s fingers rolling up the joint stop. They continue after two seconds.

“Alright.” He says, “One condition: you take the couch. I’m not sleeping there.”

Brigitte raises an eyebrow.

“What?” Sam says as he finishes up his joint, “Wouldn’t want you to think I was trying to, you know, _fuck you_ or anything now, would we?”

_(I wasn’t trying for smut)_

Brigitte snaps. She doesn’t have a name for what’s rising from inside her, but she’s tired, feeling weak and her head is a mess. Her brain goes haywire and the next thing it does is to signal her body to move. But she’s frozen in place, shy and quiet, as he casually finishes rolling up his joint and proceeds to light it up. What was it that he had said? Couldn’t cope any other way?

_(and how am I going to cope? I orchestrated this fuck up and kept at it, start to finish. I should’ve known better. If I hadn’t told her about Trina’s dog we wouldn’t be here right now, I’d be a nobody, a nothing, and you’d be fucking some small turnover forty ways from Sunday instead of being infected and having to give me a place to stay)_

It’s too much. Brigitte quietly goes to the living room and picks up her bag. There’s a world in there, woven from Polaroids and death wishes. Her fingers grip the strap until her knuckles, still slightly red, turn bone white.

_(I would never do this to you, Ginge, fuck you very much)_

She digs in and pulls everything out. Every piece of evidence that Wallace Rowlands and his pigs are searching for. She places them on the birch coffee table, right next to the overflowing ashtray. He can do whatever the fuck he wants with this now.

* * *

Sam is quarter of a way through. It’s good stuff, his own supply, because if there’s one thing that’s never in bad taste, it’s smoking up your own shit. It’s good enough to peddle, which means it should be good enough to use and it damn well is.

He’s inhaling when Brigitte comes in with her bag, goes to his desk and carefully starts loading up her supplies. He raises an eyebrow.

“What’re you doing?” he asks.

“Getting my stuff.”

“And where’re you gonna go?” he asks with a chuckle.

“What do you care?” she asks, grabbing an X-Acto knife. She considers it. Decides against it. There is such a thing as too much show.

Sam sighs wearily.

“You can always stay.” He says.

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

There. All in.

She slings it over her shoulder and marches out.

Sam waits for a few moments.

“Shit.”

He gets up and goes after her.

* * *

Brigitte hasn’t taken five steps out the door when she hears it open again.

“Brigitte, wait.”

_(keep walking, keep walking away)_

“God damn it, will you stop?”

_(there’s nothing for you back there, out there, anywhere)_

“Jesus Christ!”

Sam overtakes her and stands in front of her, joint still in hand.

“No, stop." he says, "Stop, what are you doing?”

_(this way I can hurt myself, but nobody else)_

“Seriously,” he says, “I told you that you can stay, right? So what’s the rush into the great beyond?”

“Spare me the interest. You don’t want me here. So I’m going. If you don’t like what you want, don’t want it.”

“I don’t!” Sam’s voice cracks. He coughs.

“I’m not gonna tell on you. Not to the cops.”

Sam blinks.

“You think it’s about that? That I’m out to save just my own ass here?” he asks.

“You’re not out to save mine.”

_(and you don’t even care, nobody cares)_

Sam throws the joint away. He sticks his hands in his pants’ pockets. When he speaks, he's uncharacteristically calm. Soft, even.

“You know, the first time someone came up to me and called me a cherry hound, I had no idea what it meant.” He says, “Guy just walked up to me, said his dad’s a lawyer in some big-shot Ontario firm, said they got me on at least statutory rape, said he knows Trina wasn’t the only one. I told him to go fuck himself, what the hell was he talking about? He threw one at me. Next thing I know, I’m on the ground, he’s on top of me, and I’m trying to keep him from cracking my skull open. I’m thinking, maybe I should’ve done something to deserve this, you know? Then, as that's going on, out of nowhere, Trina comes along. She pulls the guy off, and I’m still trying to decide which way is up, seeing stars in broad daylight, and I hear her tearing him a new one. She helps me up, says we have to get me cleaned up. I just think, cleaned up? What, after this shit? Give you a week, and let’s see who does what, yeah?"

He looks at her. She's listening.

"So," he continues, "I get on out. A week passes, and suddenly, I’ve chased more bubble-gum-breath no-brainers than I could possibly have time to chase. The guys are worse, they think hanging with me makes them cooler, makes their dicks bigger and may get them, eventually, an infinite supply of weed. Sam the Man. Sam the Man who popped Trina Sinclair, got ahead of the conga line of assholes who probably ended up hearing about me, because the killer is, she thought so, too. Older guy, has his own place, has a job, into shit she’s too scared to not like and doesn’t know about anyway, why the fuck not, right? She never saw how dead-end I was. Stuck in Bailey fucking Downs, day in, day out, trapped in this fucking crypt. My one shot was the black orchid...” Brigitte flinches, “...but I’m sure I would’ve found a way to fuck that up without you anyway.”

Sam takes a breath. He turns and points towards the greenhouse.

“See that back there? That’s me, Brigitte. That’s all I am. That’s all I’m gonna be, or at least it was. I’m not as deep as you think I am, hell, I’m not even half as deep. What you see is all I’ve got.”

Brigitte is speechless. Honesty is one thing, but for him to shed his skin like this, to drop the faces she’s already seen...

“So if you wanna go, go.” He takes a step to the side, clearing her way. “'cause I’m dead either way and I’m buried, right here.”

Brigitte’s lip quivers, just for the fraction of a second. She drops her bag, goes up to Sam and delivers a sturdy slap-punch to his face, right on his cheekbone.

“Don’t say that!” she snaps, “Don’t you _ever_ say that! Why do you think I’m still here!? I can barely keep myself alive, and you’re just gonna pussy out on me? You’re dead? You have no idea what that means, you fucking _idiot_! I’ve spent my whole life trying to die! But now that I’m trying to stay alive for once, everyone around me is dying! So grow a pair, Sam, this is hard enough without you giving up on everything because of something I said – like it even fucking matters! Like I ever matter! We’re both dead, don’t you get it? We’re both fucking _dead_!”

Sam’s eyes are wide open and the look on his face spell out his thoughts to her.

_(how was I supposed to know that?)_

* * *

The silence is awkward, pregnant with meaning and heavy with implications. Brigitte disappears behind her mask as Sam tries to figure out a way to break through to her. He used to know, he figures. He's been around long enough to make the rumours credible and knows a thing or two about a thing or two. But Brigitte Fitzgerald is something else entirely. One wrong word, he thinks, and it's dead bodies everywhere.

“So...” he says, prompting her eyes to dart up from behind the curtain of her hair, “...what now?”

Brigitte just stares blankly at him.

“Look, I’ll keep my hands to myself... as well as other parts. We’ll figure something out.”

Brigitte wants to curl up and die inside, but she finds that she is dead already and something is feeding off of her corpse. A demon in her veins, and it’s telling her that it wasn’t so bad.

The memory of kissing him right next to Jason’s corpse, just to have had. Just to feel something, anything. Just to know he exists, just to know everything exists.

She looks and sees that she’s got him good – one of her rings has cut into his cheek. There’s a thin line of blood marking the wound, but from what she can see, it’s not an especially deep one... unless it’s already healed.

Something in her head clicks and her mind kicks into overdrive. It’s so simple that she wonders why it had to cost Jason McCardy his life.

“I have an idea.” She says.

“About?”

“How to handle this.”

“I’m all ears.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

_(you don’t like your ideas? stop having them)_


	12. Lessons of Death

Brigitte rushes back inside, dragging Sam along. She takes him straight to the bedroom.

“Sit down.” She says, pointing at the bed. He does, watching her carefully. She sets down her bag and takes off her coat. She takes off her sweater. Then she takes off the long-sleeve t-shirt underneath. Sam doesn’t know if he should be confused or hopeful.

Brigitte gracefully removes a band from her wrist and pulls her hair into a ponytail.

“Take off your jacket and shirt.” She says.

“This is going in a different direction.” Sam says with a half-smile, “But okay.”

Brigitte picks something up from his pile of anti-lycanthropy stash. When she turns, Sam sees the X-Acto knife, gleaming in her thin fingers.

“Déjà vu?” he asks.

“What did you think I was gonna do?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. Not this.”

Brigitte rolls her eyes. She sits down next to him, knife in hand. Sam looks at it. Then he looks at the pale arm next to his.

Then he gets it.

“Oh, you’re out of your mind.” He says, “Swap blood? Seriously?”

“No.” she says, “The first sign is healing. The faster you heal, the closer you are. We can track our healing, see what the monkshood’s doing.”

Without further ado, she digs in. Sam watches in shock as the knife’s tip sinks slightly into her arm and she drags it along the skin, opening up the gash. Once done, she draws two more lines, right next to the first. The sight of her blood, bright red and now trailing paths across the white, makes his skin crawl.

The way she does it, without even flinching, without any indication that this means anything to her at all, sets his mind on fire.

“There. That should do it.” She says, “Now you.”

“...you’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

Brigitte flashes an all-knowing smile.

“Exsanguination.” She says, “Death by blood loss.”

“I know what exsanguination means.”

She gives him a lopsided smile.

“Sure ya do.” She says, “There are several major arteries you can easily reach with something sharp. Common carotid artery, in your neck. Femoral, in your thigh.”

She looks up and finds that he’s listening. He’s tense, mostly because he knows she’s going to cut him, but he’s listening still. He’s not making a face or nodding in mock agreement. He doesn’t look like he secretly hopes that she’ll stop talking. He’s hanging onto every word.

Weird.

“Then there are the ulnar and radial arteries, in your lower arm – those are the veins everybody tries to cut when they slit their wrists. Like this.”

Without warning, Brigitte slices Sam’s wrist, eliciting a surprised and pained exclamation from him. Sam grabs hold of his arm, right below the elbow, and Brigitte smiles again.

_(death is my game, not yours so let me teach you how to play)_

“That’s not where the tourniquet goes.” She says, with the slightest of giggles, “The veins spread out around your carpal tunnel, before they hit your wrist. It bleeds a lot, but it won’t kill you anytime soon. Here.” She holds his hand and moves it up, and then grasps it over his bicep, “If you wanna live, that’s where it goes.”

Her smile widens. For her, this is like playing house with Ginger in their basement room, in which the family always disputed over what’s for dinner and killed each other. She's always supposed that others played those kinds of games, only with more family and less death.

_(with a few more scars, this could be home)_

“Jesus Christ, it hurts worse than I thought!” Sam hisses.

“It’s supposed to.” She holds up the X-Acto knife, its tip now stained, “I like these knives.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“So where do you want the next one?”

Sam takes a deep breath. Exhales. Glares at Brigitte’s wide open eyes, half-contained smile. She looks excited to the point of giddiness at the prospect of cutting into him.

“Oh, you’re serious...” he says.

Brigitte's lips part and reveal a grin.

* * *

Iodine and bandages follow. With well-practiced fingers and a soft touch, Brigitte dresses his wounds. Sam glances at the room – the bed is a mess, the sheets have blood on them, and they look like they’ve either gotten matching tattoos, or, judging by the red spots forming on the white gauze, cut themselves open.

The cuts on Brigitte’s arm are burning, deep and slow. She takes that as a good sign. Part of her wants to stay here, in his room and cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, and cut and keep cutting until there’s nothing left of either one of them. Cut herself to pieces while he watches, while he pays attention to her destroying what is now Brigitte Fitzgerald. Maybe then she'll reveal something beautiful in the wreckage.

_(together forever)_

Madness in the sanctity of self-harm. Brigitte feels the familiar tingling across her scalp and wonders if it’d be so bad if she did it after all.

_(dead in this scene, I’ll be dead in this scene but for you)_

“I think we better clean up.” Sam says, “Just in case somebody drops by.”

Brigitte stares at him.

_(die with me?)_

* * *

Sam sees her staring at him with that look in her eyes that he has seen before. The same look when she first brought him the dried monkshood, the look that betrays her normally cathartic facade. Desperate. Needing. Something is aching inside her, an ache she can’t cut out, no matter how many blades she anoints.

“Bloodletting forces your heart to replace the lost supply.” She murmurs, “The cleaner, fresher blood helps.”

She gets closer. Sam is frozen in place. Her knees push aside their supplies, the cardboard box of the gauze crunching slightly under her knee. Her eyes get closer and closer and closer... Sam can’t move as she presses her cheek against his and holds him. He feels one of her hands slide up his chest and her fingers snake around his neck.

Her body gets closer. He can feel her warmth.

Sam can’t speak.

Her lips trace a trail across his cheek and a moment later, they’re on his. Brigitte feels an electric feeling spread throughout her body, starting with the contact point. As Sam responds and they get into the groove, she starts digging the slow burn, the grinding non-urgency of it all. There’s no mindless rush here. There's just warmth and flesh and saliva and desire that she feels –lets herself feel- and she lets the momentum carry itself.

She wants to feel it for herself what it’s like.

_(sine qua non)_

Sam parts his mouth and her tongue slithers in, lazily exploring, picking up the bits and pieces of his cigarettes. He pulls his legs onto the bed, and shifts to give her room. Brigitte follows and shifts on top of him. He’s getting hard. She feels it there, between her legs. She shivers.

Brigitte withdraws for just a second. Sam opens his eyes and sees that hers are barely an inch away, burning into his very being.

_(without which not)_

Brigitte blinks.

_(he’s still here)_

Brigitte withdraws, her hands on his shoulders.

_(I killed him and he still hasn’t thrown me away)_

A moment of hesitation. Then it passes.

* * *

Brigitte quietly gets off of him. She goes to her bag and pulls out her diary. She takes one of his pens from the desk.

“What time is it?” she asks.

Sam blinks a few times. What?

“The time, Sam.”

“Uhh, it’s...” his wrist watch says: “...3:13 PM.”

Brigitte writes down: **November 9, 3:13 PM - INCISION.**

“We should keep track of the times to see if we heal faster.” She says as she closes the notebook and slips it back into her bag, “We should cut again when these heal.”

She leaves without another word. Sam is left to stare at the ceiling, uncomfortable now due to the mercifully fading hard-on confined to the space of his underwear. He wonders just what the hell that was.

He decides that he will never know.

* * *

Brigitte almost makes it into the living room before the door is knocked on. From the knocking, Brigitte feels that whoever it is means business: the knocks are steady and strong. Sam comes rushing out of the bedroom, slipping on his shirt. He passes Brigitte his jacket. Brigitte stands confused for a second and then remembers the bandages. She puts the jacket on. Sam buttons his cuffs and opens the door.

Wallace Rowlands is waiting for them on the other side with his arms crossed, and a look on his face that says he is not amused in the slightest.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asks.

“No.” Sam says. Brigitte hunches, becoming as small as possible. 

* * *

“Well, I’m not going to take too much of your time." Rowlands says, "Three things. One. Ms. Fitzgerald.”

Brigitte looks up at him, eyes pleading.

_(don’t say it)_

“We concluded our search of your house.” He digs into his jacket and produces a key on a hollow ring, “You can go back now... if you want.”

He presents her with the key. Sam takes it and passes it to Brigitte.

“Two?” Sam asks.

“Since that part of the investigation is concluded, your mother will be transferred for the convenience of her trial. There’s some paperwork, but we’ve done most of it when she confessed. She’ll be gone tomorrow, so if you’d like to visit her, now is the time.”

Brigitte disappears. She puts herself in a box and buries it behind a brick wall. Sam, mindful of her, glares at Rowlands to get on with it. Rowlands takes his cue.

“The final thing. Jason McCardy has gone missing. His mother tells me that you two were supposed to meet him, but he never showed. Is this true?”

Brigitte can feel her heart pounding faster. She steals a glance at Sam, who’s standing there, calm as death. Sam nods.

“So, any ideas as to where he might’ve gone?” Rowlands asks.

“How should I know?” Sam responds.

“Where were you going to meet with him, again?”

“Bleachers.” Brigitte says, a bit too hastily.

“At the school?” Rowlands raises an eyebrow.

“We can smoke there.” Sam says.

Rowlands raised an eyebrow.

“...moving on. You know the school is closed pending the investigation. What were you planning to do, sneak in?”

“There was no murder then.” Sam says.

“So, in that case, I take it you’re all friends?”

“He comes around to hang from time to time.” Sam says.

“And, you?” Rowlands’ eyes burn holes into Brigitte’s. Brigitte averts her gaze. Hello, boots.

“I’m just with him.” She says, “That’s all.”

“Well, okay.” Rowlands says, “You know where to find me if anything happens, or if McCardy decides to call. Until then, don’t go anywhere.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Sam frowns.

Rowlands walks away. Sam closes the door and sighs.

“Shit.” He says, “Wow. You’re a better liar than I thought.”

“It's a usefull skill.” Brigitte says, “You think he bought it..?”

“That you’re _with me_?” Brigitte flinches, “Yeah. Hook, line and sinker.”

 _(she’s just begging for negative attention)_

* * *

Pamela Fitzgerald feels an odd sense of calm. The holding cell is a simple one. Bars, cot, sink and bowl. It’s drab and gray, but it gives her more solace than her (perhaps) over-decorated home ever has.

She remembers the last conversation she’s had with Brigitte. The moment when she admitted that everything has gone to hell. She had gone over where she might’ve gone wrong a million times since she had found the severed fingers of Trina Sinclair in the back yard, and now, as it was then, she knows all the answers.

Failure to go a shade orange, not one of them.

But she knows that for once, she’s acting like their mother instead of trying to act like a hybrid between their mother and their best friend which, let’s face it, she never was. Never would be.

She’s finally doing the right thing. Facing 25 to life to protect her daughters.

So Pamela is very surprised when she’s told she has a visitor and Brigitte walks in, followed closely by that boy, what was his name...

The boy sticks his hands in his jacket’s pockets and leans against the wall while Brigitte’s fingers curl around the bars.

“Mom...”

Her voice is almost pleading. Pamela knows that if she still has a heart, it’s broken now.

“Brigitte, what are you doing here?”

“They’re going to transfer you tomorrow.”

Pamela nods with a faint smile.

“I wanted to see you.” Brigitte says.

“Oh, Brigitte.” Pamela stands and holds her hands over the bars, “No matter how much you grow up, you’re still my little girl. Why do you feel so guilty? Because of something I did?”

“If I hadn’t...”

Pamela tightens her grip. They’re watching. She’s seen enough police procedurals to know that. Part of her would love to hear Dominic DaVinci’s take on the whole thing.

“I will have none of that, young lady. I made my bed.” Pamela looks over her shoulder to the cot, which, Brigitte sees, is immaculate, “Now I’ll lie in it.”

Brigitte feels a lump in her throat as her mother begins to sob. Helpless in himself, Sam stands coldly in the background.

“God, I swore I wasn’t going to do this.” Pamela says, “But if there’s one thing I’m proud of, it’s raising you, Brigitte.” Her hand caresses her cheek and Brigitte is certain she’s crying then, “You turned out better than I could’ve hoped. So I guess my little lessons took. Think about that when you’re feeling guilty about things you haven’t done, hm?”

_(but what about the things I have done, mom, what about the bodies I’ve made, the death I’ve brought home)_

* * *

Pamela waves Brigitte goodbye. She wonders if her instruction, for her not to come there again, nor to wherever she’s going, will take. She has a feeling that this will be the last time she’s seen her daughter and thinks this good. She sits down on her cot and thinks of happier times, when her daughters’ tea parties meant stuffed animals and plastic, not a dollhouse full of cleaning supplies and cyanide teapots.

* * *

Brigitte gets in the van right before Sam. She buckles her seat belt. She looks down. There’s a bottle of rye whiskey by the gear shift. She takes it, turns the cap off and takes a large gulp. It burns her throat as it goes down. The taste is so bitter, it’s almost sweet. She barely manages to swallow before the coughing fit takes over. Sam, incredulous, lights up a cigarette and waits for her to finish. Brigitte takes another swig. Then another. She’s going for the fourth when Sam snatches the bottle from her hands.

“I think that’s enough.” He says and puts it back to where it was. He smokes quietly. She stares at Bailey Downs, following the length of Leland Street and to beyond. She thinks of Ginger. She thinks of the cuts in her arm, now aching dully.

“You okay?” Sam asks.

“No.”

_(nothing will be okay ever again)_

“So... what now?” he asks.

“Just take me home.”


	13. A Moment of Brendon Lee Calm

Sam first takes her to her own house, but the moment she realizes that that’s where he’s going, she steers him towards the greenhouse. He doesn’t ask, but suggests getting her a fresh set of clothes – her only two outfits have been spent, one of them sitting in the clothes hamper with dried blood on them. Brigitte reluctantly agrees, but gives him instructions and sends him in her stead.

 _(you coward)_

* * *

After a small eternity, Sam returns with a duffel bag, throws it in the back of his van, gets in and drives... all without a single word.

The street lamps lined up on both sides, shedding dead, yellowish lights onto the pavement guide them as Sam bites his tongue. He allows her this little escape, going to his grave instead of her own. He knows that there will be a day when she will go back. Some part of him absolutely refuses the idea.

The mere thought of it seems too much like a doomsday scenario. 

* * *

Once they’re inside, they go straight to the living room, Brigitte carrying the take-out sandwiches they bought on their way to Leland Street to see Pam. She takes off her coat and sweater and is left with her v-neck, long-sleeve t-shirt that Sam likes more than some of her other clothes, as it is a bit tighter than the other items in her oversized ensemble. He sits down next to her and as she unwraps the sandwiches, he turns on the TV. Knowing the channel configuration, he dances around news channels, instead cruising for something ridiculous enough to distract them.

The image of a thin, androgynous Adonis in leather pants and long, shiny fangs cutting an impressive figure in mid-monologue stops him. Brigitte’s hands that are holding her sandwich freeze.

“Wanna watch?” Sam asks.

“Whatever.”

“Whatever it is, then.” 

* * *

“It’s supposed to be a metaphor.” Brigitte says, “Alienation, isolation, loneliness, melancholy – not showing off in trying to be what, exactly? As sexy as possible? As Goth-chic as possible?”

“Wait, so you’re fine with vampires being real, but you take issue with the way they dress?”

“A vampire’s supposed to blend in! How is anyone supposed to be the silent predator when they walk around like this? Everything about him screams trouble!”

“Trouble. Not vampire.”

“It’s very hard to blend into a crowd when you look like you used to be Brandon Lee’s stunt double and you miss the good old days.”

“He was in other movies, you know.”

“Don’t change the subject. And the other ones sucked. Just so you know.”

“Oh, so we have a Brandon Lee fangirl here!”

“No? I just – look, _The Crow_ was really good, okay?”

“Now who’s changing the subject?”

“Shut up!” Brigitte can’t hold back a giggle. Sam grins.

“Not in your life.”

Sam mentally kicks himself. One word and there is suddenly a spectre at the feast. It takes one word for Brigitte to disappear behind her bangs, to instinctively hunch and make herself smaller – Sam has seen some animals do that, in order to make themselves less apparent to predators.

He decides to take a jab regardless. Fortune favors the bold and all that.

“Penny for your thoughts, B.”

Brigitte shakes, as if she has just been stabbed and Sam raises an eyebrow. It is a classic trick, it has a very high success rate, it should _work,_ so why-

“Don’t call me that. Please?”

“Uhh...” Sam feels confusion set in, “Sure?”

“Just... don’t.”

_(remember the names they used to call you, the other names, the ones that bit and scratched)_

“Well, that was good while it lasted.” Sam says and reaches for what’s left of his soda. It’s warm.

Brigitte glances at him sitting there, lighting up a cigarette to wash everything down – the dinner, the movie... isn’t that what they call a date, she wonders for a moment. It fits the mould of all those chick flicks she used to make fun of with Ginger – and here she is, living one, in the faux-break up scene, telling him that it’s not him. It’s her.

It sickens her. Dancing around him is making her sick. She knows the human circumcised dick and knows that she’s running for her life from it.

_(I’m nothing without a crisis)_

“She called me that.” Brigitte murmurs, “Ginger... called me that.”

“Okay.” Sam says, “It won’t happen again.”

Sam feels that he’s constantly telling her that something-or-other will not happen again, but he’s not thinking about what, because there, be dragons.

“Why are you nice to me, Sam?” Brigitte asks suddenly.

“What, do I need a reason or something?”

Brigitte doesn’t answer. She hides behind an old trick: if you just keep quiet, people usually start talking of their own volition.

_(it comes naturally to you)_

Sam shifts. He folds one leg and faces her.

“Wait. Oh, fuck me - you’re actually _serious_...” he says. He considers it. “Well, not for the reasons that you’re ever gonna think of.”

“You know what I think before I think it?”

“No. It’s educated guess.”

Brigitte eyes him curiously.

“Educated?” she sneers.

“Look, we can sit here and self-deprecate for as long as you want, hell, I’ll do it for the both of us, but the point is, I care about you.” Brigitte raises an eyebrow, “Mm-hm.” Sam says, taking a drag from his cigarette, “I know, right? Call the men in white to drag me out, kicking and screaming. Fuckin’ certify me.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Educated guess. Look, Brigitte, I don’t have to be crazy to care. If that was the case, then I know everybody else around here is way too sane for their own good.”

“It just comes naturally to you.” she says.

“That’s ‘cause I’m fucked in the head.” he smiles.

“I don’t think you’re crazy. You’re just unlucky.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake... Look, you were right, alright? You didn’t put a gun to my head. You didn’t force me into anything, I came along for the ride and not because I was going where my dick pointed at, either, just so we’re clear on that.”

Brigitte bites her lower lip.

“...sorry about that.”

“You and nobody else.” Sam counters, “So shut up and-“

He never gets to tell Brigitte what she should do after shutting up. Brigitte’s arms fling themselves around his neck and she pulls him in, spider-leg fingers gripping a handful of his hair. Sam feels the muscles in her arm flexing, trembling slightly as they try to keep him there. He returns the hug and puts his hands on her back. He feels small tremors under his palms.

He holds her as she holds onto him for dear life; she shakes, sobs and cries, everything leading up to the Brandon Lee moment of calm pouring out of her. Sam wonders as he stares at the wall, the cheap wallpaper peeling in thin strips in several places, if they’re going to make it out alive.

* * *

_(I’ve lost nothing, everything’s lost me)_

* * *

Brigitte stops crying after what seems like an eternity. Sam provides her with a Kleenex, for which she is grateful. She breathes. She feels wrecked, as if she’s been through a meat grinder and came out of the other side in one piece. She finds Sam staring. She wonders what he sees.

_(people make me sick)_

Sam sees something that prompts him to cup her cheeks with his hands and gently –cautiously- pull her in for a kiss. She’s surprised at first, stiffens up, but after a moment of two, her eyes flutter closed and she relaxes. She slides onto his lap and settles in, comfortably, as they chase each other around the contact point.

Sam gets into the groove and his hands start roaming, from the small of her back down to the curve of her ass, fingers pressing against the denim. She breathes heavily and her lips trace a line down his chin, to his neck. The prickling of Sam’s 3-day old stubble tickles her lips as she tastes his skin. Her fingers tap on his shirt and expertly undo the buttons, practice gained from having to dress Ginger when she didn’t want to wear something.

_(you play with your new friends and I’ll play with mine)_

Sam’s fingers curve underneath her sweater, but searching, he also grabs the hem of her long-sleeve t-shirt. Brigitte’s hands are all over him, feeling around his body, exporing, while her tongue amateurishly traces his jawline, the rugged dune of his chin and enters his mouth. He shifts, letting her push his shirt down and pulls at her clothes, trying to get them off of her.

Brigitte breaks contact. She lifts her arms up and waits.

“You don’t...” Sam murmurs, catching his breath, “...you sure?”

_(mom, what to guys want?)_

“Aren’t you?” she says.

Sam pulls her sweater up. Brigitte reaches down to help him. She takes off her undershirt. Sam follows suit. As Brigitte reaches behind herself to unhook her bra clasp, Sam takes in the dark circles around her eyes, her pale cheeks, the mess of her hair he has to periodically adjust... so unlike the others, so much more than.

The droning of the TV in the background, her thin neck that he then reaches forward to taste, eliciting a pleasant moan that he can feel vibrating beneath the skin...

He captures a small strip of flesh and gently bites down on it, causing her to inhale sharply.

_(some of them might seem cool or different, but they’re all pretty much the same)_

Brigitte looks up. She can see the very edge of the round lamp hanging from the ceiling, the light painting the beams with gradient hues, growing darker the further they reach.

Sam’s mouth closes over her nipple and his tongue feeds the electric surge inside her, dispersing her thoughts. Pleasure, if this is what it is, spreads throughout her and she can feel it vibrating inside her in little trembling shocks, building up to an earthquake, lazily tipping the scales.

_(killing is like sex, you don’t just stop in the middle)_

She’s unaware that she’s grinding against him. It’s painful for Sam, straining against his pants, feeling the warmth between her legs pressing down on him. He decides that he can’t take it for much longer and withdraws his hands from her back to reach for his pants’ button, or at least the goddamn zipper. That’s when the scramble begins. She kisses him, a brush of her lips and stands up. She looks down, but the toes of her boots only tell her that they’re not even supposed to be there.

* * *

_(throw the pieces away, you’ve picked them up for long enough)_

* * *

Brigitte sheds her skin. The filth of the world, she remembers, don’t let it touch you. Layers upon layers and what she has underneath, she doesn’t want to look at. Thin lines of blue and faint purple reveal themselves as she lowers her jeans and steps out of her boots. Traitor veins that carry the curse.

_(the ugly of it all)_

She stands there, thumbs hooked into the waist band of her panties as Sam sits there, completely naked by the time she’s there, covering himself up with his hands, watching her intently.

“You need help with that?” Sam says, his voice carrying the slightest hint of humor. She flares up for a second, but then sees that he’s not making fun of her hesitation. Not entirely.

Brigitte gives him a look.

“No.” she says, “I got it. It’s just...”

“Yeah?”

_(I can’t tell you everything)_

With one swift move, Brigitte stands naked before him, embracing herself. She takes one step forward and is nearly there. Nearly. She inches closer. Sam’s hands move, and they rest on her waist. He leans forward and kisses her just below her belly button. He looks up to find her looking down.

“You’re beautiful.” He says.

“I bet you said that a hundred times.”

_(to a hundred faces, to a hundred bodies, to a hundred Trina Sinclairs, all buried in shallow graves)_

“...doesn’t make it any less true now.”

_(you only hurt yourself)_

Brigitte pushes him to climb on top. Sam’s head falls back. He feels her fingers gently taking hold of him as she adjusts herself. He feels the heat radiating off of her and after a moment of near-obligatory pause, she sinks down, slowly.

For both of them, the other seems to go on forever in that moment, if forever was just a stray instant. A Brandon Lee moment of calm, suspended in time. She then starts to move, very slowly. He holds her and buries his face into her neck, submerging himself into the cascade of her hair.

Everything after blurs into the clarity of flesh, of despair in the middle of the room and sweat and abject sensation. For Brigitte, the feeling itself, the glimpse of the supernova she’s heard about once, is blinding and suddenly, she sees the gears that fed the breeder’s machine she once had nothing but contempt for.

_(sex. not even once)_

She starts laughing as her hips keep a rhythm of their own, a rhythm that he delightfully matches, sending shivers across her poison body with every thrust. One of his hands rests on her waist while the other plays with one of her breasts. As he adds his mouth to that hand, she can feel his fingers roaming her body; his hands slide down and trace a line towards her leg, touching, kneading flesh and brittle bone into the shape of wanted, the shape of beautiful.

It feels like dying inside.


	14. The Self-Mutilation Diary

Morning comes and goes. The afternoon is when Brigitte is dragged out of sleep by the sudden impact of hunger clawing at her stomach. She feels sore from her head down to her toes, as if her entire body is encased in a cast from within... the feeling is especially pronounced in a particular spot between her legs. She finds herself drooling on a stray clump of her own hair, her body in a strange position, limbs bent and tangled up in those attached to the warm body sleeping soundly next to her. She looks up and sees Sam’s work bench, the one in his room. She doesn’t recall for the fraction of an instant and then where the night went comes to her in a blinding flash of condensed recollection.

She manages to discreetly pull her limbs to a starting configuration. She then gets off the bed and looks around for her clothes.

The realization comes then: whatever she had, meaning the clothes that were on her back are in the living room. The rest are resting in a duffel bag in the back of his van.

She huffs in frustration and reaches to scratch on the bandages on her arm. They come unraveled, having held together by stray strands and little else. Brigitte looks at her arm. The cuts are still there, three parallel lines, like the marks that were on Ginger. They’re swollen, but they’ve already scabbed to the point where Brigitte knows they’re ready to start flaking at any moment.

Brigitte goes for her bag, lying on the floor next to Sam’s bedside and pulls up her diary and pen. She opens the grid.

A blank in her head for a moment. What day is it? Is it still day?

God, how long have they..?

Brigitte shakes her head and ignores the blush creeping onto her face. That's a problem for later. Prioritize.

_(the curse, Sam & me, food, sex, life)_

**NOVEMBER 9, 3:13 PM – INCISION** , says the page. Brigitte crawls to the bed on her knees. Luckily for her, Sam’s wrist watch is still on him, with a few strands of her hair caught in the crown. She shudders when she remembers the moment she felt the strands getting plucked from her scalp.

**NOVEMBER 10, 2:54 PM – HEALED TO SCABS**

“Shit.” She murmurs.

Immediately, she wonders if she cut deep enough. It’s the knives, she knows, the reason why they didn’t use Pam’s in the first place. They cut too easily, so you don’t try to cut as deep as you usually do. The reason why Ginger didn't choose them for the marks in her palm.

Brigitte stands up. She looks at the bed, where Sam is sleeping contentedly. For a moment, a brief moment if brief moments were eternities, she considers grabbing her bag, her clothes, his van and getting out. Just driving out of Bailey Downs, out of the well-lit black hole that is all she knows of home or anything else.

The moment passes. She stands there.

* * *

Brigitte crawls back into bed. She lies there, staring at him. Trying to figure out what makes him tick.

_(you only ever did right by me and I repaid you with the curse)_

Sam wakes up then. His eyes open slowly and as they adjust to the light, he catches her staring.

“Hey..." he groans, "What time is it..?”

“Around three.” she says.

“In the morning?”

“Afternoon. We... were up all night.”

“Come to think of it,” Sam rubs his eyes, “Yeah, I do remember something like that.”

“We have a problem.”

Sam blinks a couple of times to clear the last of the crust from his eyes.

“I was wondering when you’d say that.” He says.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 10, 4:00 PM – RE-INCISION**

* * *

“Here’s how it works,” Brigitte says as she sits down on the bed, an X-Acto knife and two syringes in hand. She crosses her legs. “We cut. We bleed some. We shoot up.”

“Exactly how much some do we bleed?”

“We’ll wing it.”

“I feel safer already.” Sam smirks.

“Safety’s overrated. We check every two hours.”

“I don’t think we can always redress the cuts every two hours.” Sam says, “Make it four.”

“Four. But we check. In the meantime, we have to come up with a better alternative. Something that’ll work.”

“ _If_ anything works. I mean, we’re stuck in nowhere-land with this one.”

_(not if you’re stuck with me)_

* * *

**NOVEMBER 13, 2:30 PM – HEALED. SOME SCARRING.**

**NOVEMBER 13, 2:40 PM – INCISION**

* * *

The Bailey Downs public library has an extensive section on botany, which Brigitte appreciates. Her card is still valid and even though the resident librarian whose shift she coincides with gives her a look every time she comes in, there are perks to being the local spook story.

The Countess Carmilla of Suburbia. That'll make a good movie title, she decides. Maybe Brendon Lee would star in it, if he wasn't dead.

Browsing through the section, Brigitte ignores the strange looks that follow her, the sneering of concerned soccer moms and the occasional hiss from a Trina sucking up to someone she’ll use for something that’ll require more than just looks.

She gets to her section, picks out all the books she can find on aconites. She moves on to mythology. That particular section is somewhat lacking, but she finds a few good ones on werewolves. She dumps them on a random desk and heads towards the medical section.

Most of those, she’s already read cover to cover. But there is a particular section she’s never paid much attention to before: medical history. She grabs whatever she can find that looks even remotely medieval, and returns to her pile of books.

She sits down and sighs.

She hopes that salvation is in between the lines somewhere.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 16, 3:14 PM – HEALED. LESS SCARRING.**

**NOVEMBER 16, 3:30 PM – INCISION.**

* * *

Sam is used to a lot of things by now: the occasional come-on from a bored housewife or the son of a family with a lucratively large garden trying as obviously as possible to score some weed from him. Occupational hazards. Also coming with the territory is the seasonal nature of his work: he can keep pretty much anything alive in the greenhouse, but out in Bailey Downs, there’s progressively less he can do. He instead relies mainly on his weed this time of year, that and whatever minimum-wage bullshit the municipality will give him. There’s a variety of plants at the greenhouse that he intends to sell, in particular three bonsai trees, the third of which is a miniature he’s painstakingly carved into shape from an unsuspecting birch. It’s a con job, but he’s done it before. He’s used to the back-and-forth of the tough sell.

He’s not used to seeing missing posters with Jason McCardy’s face on them all over the suburb. He's not used to the dull ache inside of him when he thinks that he knows exactly where the poor bastard is.

He’s not getting used to watching Brigitte cut him with hands delicate enough that it’s almost as if she wants to caress his skin, not split it with a blade.

He’ll never get used to seeing her on the verge of tears, finding it in herself to pull back and lock it all up inside.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 19, 4:45 PM – HEALED. LESS SCARRING.**

**NOVEMBER 19, 5:02 PM – INCISION.**

* * *

The woman standing at the counter of the pharmacy sizes them up. The guy, she knows as the gardener. The girl, she knows as the daughter of that killer, Pamela Fitzgerald. They’re both standing there, looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to check out the small mountain of syringes they carried to the register in their arms.

They both have dark circles under their eyes. The girl’s hair is a messy curtain obscuring most of her face. They’re pale, even for this time of year. She sees that one of his eyes is horribly bloodshot.

“What are you going to do with all these?” she asks.

Brigitte rolls her eyes. Sam takes the initiative:

“We’re gonna go back to my place, put on some goth music, and shoot up heroin from each and every one of them.”

Brigitte kicks him in the shin. Too much. But he doesn’t flinch.

“At least,” Sam adds with an annoyed sigh, “, according to you. I need them for the plants. I’ve bought them here before. One of them is looking kinda sickly lately, and I don't want to cross-contaminate.”

She’s not convinced. But she sees no reason to interfere in their imminent demise – they seem to be doing a fine job of it already.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 22, 9:20 AM – HEALED. MINIMAL SCARRING.**

* * *

They stare at the page.

“Now what?” Sam asks.

“We increase the dose.” Brigitte replies.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 22, 10:00 AM – INCISION. DOSEx2**

* * *

They put the syringes on the bedside and remove the belts from their arms. Nothing happens at first, just the overall dizziness brought on by routine anxiety. They look at each other, expecting a reaction, looking for signs of something going wrong.

Sam finds Brigitte’s hand. He’s about to squeeze it when Brigitte makes a choking sound and reaches for him. He doesn’t get it and a second later, white-hot pain erupts from the needle’s entry point and starts spreading, coursing through his veins like a raging river of broken glass.

Brigitte screams. She opens her mouth and sinks her teeth into Sam’s shoulder. Her canines pierce right through the fabric. It’s Sam’s turn to scream, but before he can, he sees her raise her fist and present it to him. He can’t see straight, his field of vision is narrowing, so he gives in and takes the offer.

They sit there, biting into each other, shaking, trying to see through the pain only to see that there’s nothing to see but the poison running through veins. The other poison, the lesser poison, burns bright at the point of blindness.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 25, 1:00 PM – HEALED. SCARRED BADLY.**

* * *

Sam has an idea. He starts looking up and calling craft stores. It’s a shot in the dark, a long shot at that, but at this point, he’ll take anything.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 25, 1:15 PM – INCISION. DOSEx2**

* * *

The boredom proves too much for the teens of Bailey Downs, so they cope by organizing a little lynch mob that comes knocking on Sam’s door, or rather, throwing pebbles at windows and screaming goading taunts at Sam’s door.

The first sounds reach them just as they’re cutting. Before Sam can say anything, Brigitte licks his wounds, smearing his blood on her face. Then, without a word, she rushes out of the room, right to where she knows the machete is. Sam follows, but before he can intervene, she picks it up and walks right out the front door. She stands in front of the horde, blood running down her arm, belt dangling from her wrist, scars lining her flesh and most importantly, machete in hand. Sam emerges a few seconds later with the shears that still carry traces of Jason McCardy.

“You don’t want to be here.” Brigitte says, deadpan.

They hesitate, but don’t dare. They stand around awkwardly for a short while and then decide that they do not want to throw their lives away. ‘cause the survivor Fitz is crazy, everyone knows that – serves that drug dealing cherry hound right for fucking with Trina. They deserve each other anyway.

Brigitte turns away and goes back inside, her mind furiously working the problem, because she heard their hearts beating in the silence of their awkward hesitation.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 28, 1:00 PM – HEALED. SCARRED.**

**NOVEMBER 28, 1:15 PM – INCISION. DOSEx2**

* * *

They start to stay away from meat altogether. Sam goes down to Sushi Mike’s, a small Chinese place a little ways down Leland Street and strikes a deal with them. Their take-out egg noodles come with a plethora of vegetables, so he pays them a lump sum to have them deliver exactly these, and nothing else, three times a day. No questions asked. For a place that’s pretty much a tomb during the week, they welcome the sudden income.

The greenhouse quickly fills up with the cardboard boxes of noodles, every ounce of the insides cleaned out by increasingly ravenous tongues searching for something a little more juicy.

After the second day, Brigitte can’t even taste it anymore. She eats it, it keeps her body fed, and that’s enough.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 30, 10:45 AM – HEALED. NO SCARRING.**

* * *

“Shit.” Brigitte intones, her voice monotone.

“We can’t up the dose again." Sam says, concerned, "It’s bad enough as it is.”

“No. But we can try something else.”

“Such as?”

“Take off your clothes.”

"Why does everything have to be about me taking off my clothes all the time?"

Brigitte glares at him.

* * *

**NOVEMBER 30, 11:30 AM – BLOODLETTING. DOSEx2.**

* * *

Sam fills up the tub. Once it’s done, he adds bath salts. He strips. Brigitte walks into the bathroom already naked.

“So how is this going to work?” he asks.

“We’re going to cut.” Brigitte says, hands clasped in front of her, “We’re going to sit down, and we’re going to bleed.”

“But why the tub?”

“Easier to clean up.”

The porcelain is worn and it’s a bit more rugged than Brigitte would’ve liked, lacking the smooth, factory-made uniformity of the one she’s used to, the one in the home that’s gone now. Sam gets in first and then, a somewhat nervous Brigitte slips in, her back turned to him, and settles on top. She brings the X-Acto knife around, the second one they’re dulling. She lifts her arm and starts cutting.

Sam stares at her shoulders, twitching slightly with every incision.

* * *

**DECEMBER 2, 9:00 AM – HEALED. MINIMAL SCARRING.**

**DECEMBER 2, 10:00 AM – BLOODLETTING. DOSEx2.**

* * *

It’s the pitch-black of the greenhouse, as if the night has found a way to get in and smother every corner of the place. The bed they share lets them know they’re not alone in the dark.

“We used to play this game.” Brigitte says, “The hanging game. We were learning to tie nooses, but until then, we were practicing with regular knots. Kid stuff. We’d stand on top of chairs, deliver a last speech, and then we’d slip the noose on and jump with pride. Go out on a high note.”

Sam’s breathing is steady. Brigitte likes to think he’s asleep.

“And one day, mom caught us. I had just tied the perfect noose. I still do that sometimes, tie slipknots. They’re not as good as that one.”

Hesitation. Sam breathes.

“Ginger loved it. All of it. She thought it was funny that I was proud of my noose, enough to tell Pam she was being a bitch about it. I don’t know if I did.”

It’s safe to cry when nobody can see it.

_(go a shade orange so that nobody’ll see your dark circles and know you’ve been doing god-knows-what with god-knows-who)_

“Sam..." her voice quivers, "What’s the point of life? I thought you’d know... y’know? I thought you could tell me... but you’re dying, just like me.”

A sob, barely contained.

Sam stares at the ceiling.

* * *

**DECEMBER 3, 4:00 PM – HEALED. NO SCARRING.**

**DECEMBER 3, 5:00 PM – BLOODLETTING. DOSEx2.**

* * *

_“...as Bailey Downs in 1915, three years after Ontario reached its final borders. The settlement was initially conceived as a continuation of the trading route it used to be, however, the prevalent local legends and hearsay regarding Fort Bailey’s fate resulted in a shortage of labor. The decision to turn Bailey Downs into a settlement was made unilaterally by the construction company, Wallace & Sons Co.”_

Brigitte pushes the book aside. She refused to believe that lycanthropes (oh, sorry, the book said _Wendigo)_ had set fire to Fort Bailey. Some things were just too far out to consider.

_(yeah, when it's bullshit)_

* * *

**DECEMBER 4, 3:30 PM – HEALED.**

* * *

Brigitte just wants to scream.

_(and now I am you)_


	15. Ice Cream for Predators

The petals are yellow. Sam checks to see if they’ve skimmed off the top or if the stash turned out lighter than it was supposed to be, but his triple beam says that it’s all there. Good. This is insane on a whole new level, chasing the thinnest of leads to save the thinning thread they’re hanging by, but it’s all he has. It’s barely December, and the seeds he has are still useless... especially since it doesn’t look like they’re going to be around in three months’ time.

He reaches for his pack. Only one left. He has a spare, but other than that, fresh out. Shit. He never knows how much Brigitte smokes. Sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she chains them.

Ah well.

He lights up anyway. He does a sloppy job of grouping the branches together. All-in-all, having depleted the local craft store, they seem to have enough to get by.

They also have a fresh set of syringes, acquired with great difficulty, namely, by Sam attempting, rather clumsily on account of a permanent pain inside him, to bribe the guy working the night shift at the pharmacy. The matter was resolved when Brigitte produced their old receipts and put on an unexpected amount of charm to grease the wheels.

Given that they’re two days from January, Sam thinks that the stock should last until late February.

If only any of it worked.

Neither will this, but it’s so much more poisonous than the _napellus_. With any luck, they’ll put themselves out of their mutual misery.

“Fuck.” He mutters.

That’s the brick wall. Sam wonders when his life, such as it used to be, became a desperate bid for survival. Chinese take-out boxes and used up syringes and dulled craft store knives; scars running down both arms; the sound of Brigitte’s heartbeat constantly in his ears, no matter where in the greenhouse she is... the smell of her, hair and skin and wool and cloth and everything that’s consuming him.

Something stirs in him. He ignores it. He listens in. He’s sure, in his more inebriated moments, that he can hear plants breathe, but not now. He listens in for the tell-tale sounds she makes.

Nothing. Brigitte is not in the greenhouse.

* * *

Sam walks out into the biting cold, torch in hand, a white column of light scanning the ankle-high snow for any signs of a body, tracks, anything. Then, Sam sees it – a set of footprints, leading away from the driveway and...

“Ah fuck me...”

...right into the woods.

Sam follows the trail, running parallel to it in order not to lose it. His ears are perked. He’s listening in for any sound at all that might signal a wolf, a lycanthrope, the Big Foot, a vampire or whichever monster wants to come out and take a shot.

All he can hear is his own breaths and the pounding of his own heart.

Sam stops right before a clearing leading into a second treeline. The footprints, relentless, continue on and disappear into the trees. He holds the torch up and scans from the outside, which is when he sees a small mark on one of the trunks – a shabbily-carved, jagged little _G_. Six lines with a pocket knife, the pocket knife he had on him when Ginger killed him.

“You have _got_ to be shitting me. Fuck...”

Sam breaks into a run. He knows every tree on the way, every stray branch, shrub or rock. You tend to remember where the bodies are buried when you’ve buried them, after all.

* * *

The torch light scans the scenery, an eerie white amidst the black, casting shadows on dead branches as he approaches. Slowly, a sound begins to emerge, a sound he recognizes, like a song he’s heard his entire life. Someone sniffing, as he is, from the cold. He cups a hand over the torch, cutting off most of the light. He stands perfectly still, listening in.

There it is. A moan. Barely audible, not even a whisper, but present and pronounced, the type of moan he’s used to acquiring. It’s pure sex, uncharacteristically so. He can’t help but feel a warmth shoot through him when he hears it again.

Then the chewing sound begins.

Sinew and flesh ground to paste between teeth. The smacking of the mouth as the tongue swirls to taste more of what’s in it, trying to scrape a few layers off of the meat. The guttural gulp when it goes down.

Sam takes his hand off the torch.

There she is.

* * *

She’s on her knees, bent over what Sam sees is a run-of-the-mill white-tailed deer – wait, no, it's just a fawn. It has no antlers, has the white spots and is currently lying right on top of Ginger’s grave, dead. The torch highlights the blood that’s freezing on the snow.

“Oh... _God_...” Sam manages.

The smell of meat is overwhelming. He has more than half a mind to drop the torch and wrestle her into submission so that he can take the fawn and have himself some of that delicious trachea, but his shock overwhelms the hunger... for now.

“Brigitte..?”

Brigitte turns abruptly. Sam jumps and takes half a step back. Her face is stained with blood; it's red everywhere but her eyes. There’s a piece of God-knows-what dangling from her mouth and her eyes... motherfuck him, her eyes are almost _glowing_ in the torch light.

“What the fuck...” he exhales.

Brigitte slurps up the last bit of meat and starts chewing it. Sam is pulled to both sides – his stomach turns at the sight, because it’s the most appetizing thing he has seen.

“Brigitte...” Sam mutters, his tongue feels like it’s borderline vestigial by that point, “What did you do?”

Brigitte blinks. Again.

_(you think you see werewolves a lot?)_

“Sam..?”

* * *

Brigitte looks at her hands. Her fingers are covered in blood, and some of it is freezing on her skin. Plasma popsicle. Her tongue itches to lick it, see what ice cream for predators is like. You scream, I scream, the fawn screamed for the lycanthrope’s ice cream truck...

Brigitte feels the taste of raw meat in her mouth – so delicious that it’s disgusting and it’s so disgusting that it’s beyond delicious. The mere presence of the aftertaste makes her nauseous and desperate and scared and exhilarated and horny at the same time.

She doubles over and retches. Pieces of half-chewed meat come up along with a torrent of bile.

_(nothing helps except tearing live things to pieces)_

In her mind, she’s back in the basement where they all died, lapping Sam’s blood right off the floor. That same revulsion, that same insane thrill of the revulsion is there and patting her on the back as she sticks her fingers down her throat to make herself throw it all up; vomit everything that’s eating her alive from the inside and hollow out this rotting flesh.

Sam shuts down completely and defaults to what he’s seen and what he knows. He gets next to her and holds her hair up as she throws up and he holds her when the sobs start.

* * *

Once the crisis passes, Brigitte feels tired beyond the telling of it. Sam sits down into the snow and leans back on the fawn’s carcass. Brigitte scoots closer to him. Warmth is too much to ask, but she’ll settle in that wall of shame moment, for not being alone.

Sam lights up a cigarette. He smokes quietly.

Brigitte holds out her hand, blood-soaked fingers open.

“Give me.” she says.

Sam hands the cigarette over. She takes a drag. She watches the smoke disperse and dissipate when she exhales. She puts her head on Sam’s shoulder.

“Alright, I’ll say it.” Sam says with a sigh, “We’re fucked. We’re not gonna make it.”

“No.” Brigitte murmurs, “We’re not.”

“Well, I guess we’ve tried everything... well. There’s the yellow monkshood. Not that it matters anymore.”

Brigitte freezes.

“What..?” she asks.

“Yeah, I ordered some of the dried variety a while back. The roots are supposed to have healing properties, if you buy it. It’s hell of a lot more poisonous than the one we’ve been shooting. It’s a long shot, but after this... well, let’s just say I’m not counting on it to do shit.”

A flash in Brigitte’s mind.

 _“Healing wolfsbane.”_ She says.

“Yeah. _Aconitum anthora._ ”

_(I’m not dying in this town with you)_

Brigitte throws the cigarette away and dips her hands in the snow. Her fingers are numb and frostbite is assured but she doesn’t care. She brings her hands together and blows on them. She starts rubbing the snow in. It doesn’t do a marvelous job, but it cleans some of the gore. She gets up. Sam looks at her quizzically.

“Come on.” She says, holding out a semi-clean hand.

_(I’m not dying)_

* * *

Brigitte washes her face and hands as Sam cooks up the wolfsbane. She looks at herself in the mirror. She tries to look into her own eyes, to see if there’s anything behind them that’s worth this, worth anything.

_(you know what, I do see a monster)_

What has she left to lose? Life?

What a joke.

_(I’d rather die than be what you are)_

“I think it’s about as done as it’s gonna be!” Sam calls.

Brigitte braces herself.

_(can’t be worse than being roadkill)_

* * *

Sam stares at the syringe as Brigitte takes off her sweater. The liquid is not as yellow as he expected. In fact, it has a sickly, greenish tint that he doesn’t like. If it glowed, he’d safely conclude that it’s radioactive.

Brigitte takes off her necklace. The skull dangling off of it is miraculously unstained and the cord it's tied to is good enough for a makeshift tourniquet.

“I don’t know about this, Brigitte.” Sam says, “What if... fuck, what if kills you right here?”

Brigitte carefully ties the necklace around her bicep. She squeezes it nice and tight.

“And why not together? Why just you? You first?”

_(worst case scenario, you put her out of her misery)_

Brigitte taps on the vein.

“I’m not gonna lose you.” Brigitte says, “If anyone’s gonna die, it’s gonna be me.”

“Who the fuck decided that? Seriously, we’re talking about pure poison here! I’m not gonna just let you finally kill yourself, ‘cause I didn’t come this far just for this shit!”

Brigitte lies down on the bed. Sam stands there, unsure. She gestures for him to come along and feels for the vein. There it is, bulging, easily found.

Sam sits down on the bed.

“Oh, you’re out of your mind...” he says.

“Hey.”

Brigitte reaches and grabs his chin.

_(you cannot try this alone)_

“You said I can’t try this alone.” Brigitte says.

“Yeah.” Sam remembers. His last day on Earth.

“I’m not alone.” Brigitte says. She smiles, one of those rare occasions that Sam’s seen her actually smile. “I’ve got you.” She says.

* * *

Sam takes off his belt. It’s leather, and though worn, it is perfect to bite down on. She passes it on and Brigitte traps it between her teeth.

* * *

The needle sinks in slowly. Sam is nervous. His thumb is on the plunger, but the liquid he’ll push with it seems more and more dangerous, less and less right every passing nanosecond. He feels that he finally understands what she was feeling when she came to him with the monkshood: torn between trying to save her and wondering if he’ll kill her in the process.

He realizes what an asshole he is, because the words seemed so easy when they left his lips back then.

_(understand that you might kill her trying to save her)_

“Ready?” he asks.

“Do it.” Brigitte commands.

Sam injects.


	16. Healing Wolfsbane

The liquid starts spreading rapidly and while Brigitte is used to feeling any injection hurt at the entrance, this time, it branches out, rushing through the network of veins and touching each one in turn. Her breaths get caught up in her chest and once the cure reaches her heart, she chokes. Her limbs spring and she starts shaking, convulsing where she lies. Sam throws the syringe away and holds her down by the shoulders.

“Brigitte!” he shouts, _“Brigitte!”_

Her eyes roll to the back of her skull. She convulses and lets out a strangled sound.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck! Brigitte!_ ”

* * *

_(make it stop please make it stop please make it stop it burns)_

* * *

White-hot pain drowning out everything else. Pouring in from a bright point in her arm somewhere, on another continent and another life, waiting to be released into her. Burning like the pokers they tortured witches with in all those movies. _The Name of the Rose_ with Sean Connery, the fear of laughter because how can you laugh at your own death? That’s her. She’s Jorge of Burgos, blind to the world and condemning it.

_(you have two choices then, don’t you?)_

Let it. Let the burning white-wash herself from herself; let it burn everything to ash. Search and Destroy. Brigitte Fitzgerald can’t live, she never learned how to; even all those years ago, all she wanted was to die, and she was so happy when her sister joined her and made it a project; made it part of the Pact. Out by sixteen... out by sixteen... out...

_(either give in)_

Waiting, counting down the days and afraid she’ll fuck it up, afraid of people laughing at her, afraid of people rejecting her even when she’s a corpse. It’s not an image issue, it’s not vanity: she wants to be the beautiful that she’s not, that she never will be. Then, after everything, finding herself wanting to live, wanting to breathe and let them laugh, let them push her away, push her around and aside, because they’re all dead anyway, they’re all dead but she’s not. She's not dead in this scene... dead in this scene...

_(or give up)_

He’s shouting her name. He’s still there, he still hasn’t given up on her, still hasn’t thrown her away. She’s not dying alone, because he’s there, trying to get through to her and why? What has she done to deserve it? All she ever did was to fuck his life up, kill him, hurt him, all for what? For who? For Ginger? For herself? Forget everything else, forget the sex, forget the stolen kisses, forget his hasty declarations of not thinking her that way – he’s all she has.

She doesn’t know if it’s enough.

_(it only dies if you do)_

* * *

Brilliant white light, borne from the pain, obscures the room – if it indeed is a room. It feels like that: all boxed in and sealed off. There are shadows overhead - they keep passing by in a straight line.

She’s wearing a black hoodie, with the hood raised. Strands of henna-colored hair, mixed with strands of white are pouring out of it. Black cargo pants, black combat boots, black undershirt...

...the bird skull necklace dangling from her neck.

Pale white skin on cherubic cheeks, mischievous green eyes... full lips, curled in a half-smile.

Brigitte hears her own voice quivering, mousy and pathetic.

“G-G-G-Ginger..?”

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Ginger says.

Brigitte can’t speak.

“What’s the matter, Bee? No hello? No, I missed you? I come back from the dead for you and you’re just gonna what, stand there and stare at me?”

“You’re not real.”

“Bullshit.” Ginger grins, “I’m as real as you are. Real as the poison that you’ve got in your veins right now. You’re dying, y’know.” Brigitte’s eyes widen. Ginger nods in approval, “That’s right. You took pure poison like a fucking idiot, and now you’re dying. Dead in the scene, just like me.”

Brigitte’s tongue is in knots. There are so many things she wants to say, so many things she never got to say. Too much to put into words.

She can hear an echo scattering in the distance, desperate and insistent. There’s not much time, she knows.

“So, here we are." Ginger says, "Just like before. United against life as we know it, Bee, how does it feel?”

“Ginger, I...”

Ginger cocks her head towards Brigitte, waiting.

Brigitte runs up to her and pulls her into a hug. She bursts out crying, holding Ginger close enough to feel her heartbeat.

“I was lost without you.” Brigitte says, “You left me all alone.”

Ginger’s hands are in the air. She’s not retuning the embrace.

“I love you, Ginger.” Brigitte whispers, “And I’m sorry...” she sobs, “I’m so... so _sorry_...”

As Brigitte openly weeps, she feels her sister finally return the embrace. Brigitte holds her tighter.

The echo is calling. Growing louder. Slithering into the white room.

“Yeah, well, sorry can’t undo a knife to the chest.” Ginger says, “But it’s a start, don’t you think?”

Brigitte keeps crying, her shoulders shaking.

“Remember that game we used to play when we were little?” Ginger says, her hands gently caressing Brigitte’s back, “The one where we’d make ourselves hold our breath until we passed out? And you’d always get scared and call mom and I’d get in trouble?”

Brigitte draws back, just enough to see Ginger’s face, to etch her face into her memory.

“That game really sucked.” Ginger says.

Brigitte can’t help it. She bursts out laughing.

Together, they laugh, holding onto each other in the absence of the white room, away from everything, entombed in the safety one of one another.

The alarm was screaming now, splitting everything apart with its razor-sharp resonance.

“I miss you.” Brigitte says.

“You’re supposed to. I’m dead.”

Brigitte holds out her hand.

“Out by sixteen or dead in this scene.” she says.

Ginger takes the hand offered. Their fingers interlock.

“Together forever.” Ginger says, “Now breathe. You’re about to lose the game.”

The echo is calling...

* * *

_..._ motherfuck me, come on! _Come on!_ ”

The first breath cuts just like the first wound – sharp, deep, inconsolable. Her lungs stretch to their limit and then contract, exhaling. Brigitte feels her breath tear something out of her throat just to scatter it into the air. She starts coughing as her lungs begin to work overtime, to make up for when they were still. The external pressure on her chest disappears, but she can still feel it, internally. Phantom memory of the heart massage. She turns to her side, curling up in a ball, one arm sweeping the air to give herself some room to breathe. She tries to see, to feel, to have a sense of where she is.

“Shit... oh fucking _shit_ , that was close... that was in the fucking red, I swear to God...”

The familiar, rugged surface of the worn-out faux-Persian rug. A cliché accessory for a functional room. The familiar view of the doorway, leading to the corridor that she once walked down, expecting to find nothing but the end of all things. The worn-out frame, sporting a few bent splinters. The smell of soil, wood, glass, cigarettes and marijuana.

Familiar place. Sam’s place.

Home.

Just as soon as it fades in, her consciousness fades out and all goes black.

In the darkness, somebody calls somebody’s name. Somebody lives. Somebody can’t believe that this was caused by the impossible only to circle back to that, in the end.

_(not by what you think, they don’t exist)_

* * *

When Brigitte comes to, she finds herself in Sam’s bed. She’s down to her underwear and under the covers. As blood flow restores itself, a nasty gash on her arm makes itself known by starting throb dully. Her throat dry as the desert and still trying to get the morning blur out of her eyes, Brigitte lifts up her arm. There’s a thin strip of gauze there, stained, but it appears to be fresh.

Brigitte rubs her eyes. She sniffs to clear her nose.

Her eyes fly open and awakening, the fast-forwarded version, washes over her.

She expects to differentiate the different smells present in the room. Detergent used to wash the sheets, rye whiskey, cigarettes, leftover ashes, weed, soil, wood, glass, surgical steel, fibers in the rug, wax of the candle, 40 proof alcohol, her own sweat, his shampoo, iodine, denim, cotton, wool, polyester... but there’s nothing. They are all there, but faint, like the ambient hum of rooms – indistinct until approached, focused on.

She props herself up on her elbows.

Could it have..?

_(you can’t fix this)_

Brigitte knows that shooting up monkshood does that. The first surge of the antitode dulls the sharpened senses to the level of a baseline human, pushing the world back as it pushes back the Curse. The withdrawal to the next dose is the grace period, in which the symptoms slowly re-emerge.

Waking up being the exception. Brigitte knows that opening her eyes then is like being reintroduced to the repressed instincts that animals have but humans have lost for the most part.

But now, she just feels like she stayed up all night watching horror flicks with Ginger and has to get through school with barely an hour of rest.

_(what happened..?)_

The name leaves her lips by the virtue of the same instinct, expressed differently.

“Sam..?”

* * *

Brigitte gets up. Her bare feet find the texture of the rug pleasant and she manages to stand. She glances at Sam’s desk. Amidst all the junk, there is a single solitary syringe filled with a greenish yellow liquid. The healing wolfsbane. Brigitte takes it.

“Sam?” she calls out again.

No answer.

Her heart starts beating faster as she cautiously approaches the door and peers into the hallway. Nothing but the plants. She steps out of the bedroom.

“Sam, are you here?”

Just the ordinary cracks and pops of the greenhouse. Brigitte takes a step further. Something sharp enters her sole, startling her and eliciting a small yelp. She staggers back. She leans on the wall, lifts up her foot and inspects her sole.

It's a shard of glass, but it's not clear. It's tinted. She pulls it out. It’s thicker than the windows, thinner than the vials and the ashtrays. She looks down and sees a scattered river of glass shards, leading down the hall and...

_(something's broken)_

The TV is lying right outside the entrance of the living room, now just a hollow box with the screen smashed to pieces. From the looks of things, she guesses that it was thrown from inside the living room.

_(oh God, I hope not)_

Brigitte goes back to the room and pulls on her socks and shoes. She goes to the desk to pick up some sort of weapon. She finds a familiar woodcarving knife. The irony isn't lost on her as she takes it.

She doesn’t intend to use it, but then again, she never intended to do a lot of things.

Brigitte heads out and into the living room.

* * *

_(be careful – that would’ve been the last thing I ever said to him, but he never was. He stuck by me. That’s not careful at all)_

* * *

He’s sitting in the corner with his legs spread and head down. In between them are four syringes, all spent.

Brigitte freezes in place when she first sees him. It’s not the state of him, that is just an afterthought to her. He looks like a mess. His hair is a bit longer. His ears are sharp and longer than that of an average human. His chin is a bit more prominent, she sees, and his fingernails are small daggers sticking out of their beds. He seems to have put on a bit of bulk, if that is indeed possible – his body is filling up his clothes quite nicely.

His right arm is held higher, as it is cuffed to a pipe sticking out of the wall... with three different sets of handcuffs. She sees that there are a few scars on his wrist already, and that he’s scraped off a few layers of paint as well as rust from the pipe.

She feels the syringe in her hand as if it weighs a ton.

_(it’s a super antioxidant, radical detox)_

Maybe it’s time, but her legs refuse to move, refuse to go near that thing.

_(not a thing, it’s a he, it’s a boy, and if he has cooties, I have the cure)_

Brigitte inches closer. Sam doesn’t stir. She hides her hand holding the knife behind her, on the off chance he wakes up and comes to the conclusion that she’s there to kill him.

Three steps left and that’s when his eyes open. He looks straight at her. She freezes, trying not to scream – the eyes she’s seen in many different states now reflect nothing but an intensely focused killer instinct. Jaws of bloodshot death held in sockets.

 _“Look who finally decided to wake the fuck up.”_ he snarls.

His tone is acidic, every syllable a corrosive drop on her resolve.

 _“Yeah, it’s me. Sam the Man.”_ He tugs at the handcuffs, _“Kinky, huh?”_ he asks without a hint of humour.

"Sam..."

_"Somebody had to do something. You were just gonna lie there and take it otherwise.”_

“I...”

_(and what do we say to the people we’ve wronged, Brigitte?)_

“I have the cure.” Brigitte says.

Sam laughs. It’s a sickening, guttural sound, closer to baying than laughter.

 _“That shit’s not a cure, you know. It just slows the transformation. It doesn’t stop it, **B**.”_ she flinches at his emphasis, _“Nothing stops it.”_

“It cured me.” she says, “I’m cured, Sam. Look.”

Brigitte surreptitiously slips the knife into her panties and demonstrates the cut on her arm. It's starting to close, but it’s still not healed.

Sam blinks.

 _“Well, isn’t that something.”_ He says, _“Three days, no monkshood. Nice. I was hoping it would bleed.”_ He licks his lips, _“It should’ve healed.”_

“It didn’t. See? It works. The stuff works.”

_“Don’t you come near me with that thing. It killed you.”_

“I’m still here, Sam.”

_“For a minute. Longest fucking minute of my fucking life.”_

Brigitte hesitates. She takes a deep breath and asks:

“...will you let me help you?”

Sam appears to consider it. By the way his eyes are darting all over her body (her neck, her eyes, her breasts, her legs, her thighs, her boots), he’s considering either eating her or fucking her, or both, and all a far cry from simply letting her give him the cure.

It passes. He goes all stiff as restraint takes a foothold.

 _“You’re welcome to try.”_ he says.

Brigitte braces herself. She retrieves the knife and gets to the spot between his legs. She goes down on one knee. She can smell the hunger in his breath. Her stomach churns, but she still holds.

 _“You can always fall further.”_ Sam says, looking away, exposing his neck to her. She can see the artery, engorged, pulsating with every beat of his heart. Brigitte wounds the blow. She can’t afford to go slow – he can turn his head and take a bite out of her at any moment.

“Okay.” She says, “Now hold still. This is gonna-”

_“Pinch a little?”_

Brigitte’s thumb settles on the plunger.

“No.” she says, “No, Sam. It’s going to hurt like a _bitch_.”

Brigitte stabs the needle into his neck and empties its contents into his body before he can even begin to respond.


	17. Epilogue (Out by Sixteen.)

Brigitte rolls up her sleeve, exposing an inch of skin just below her wrist. She presses the blade down. It sinks in with little pressure and Brigitte feels that thin, ice-cold pain send shivers down her spine. She pulls and opens up a pretty decent cut.

“What the fu- are you _insane!?_ ” Sam snaps. Before she can say anything, he’s there, one hand on her wrist, surveying the wound, “Jesus Christ, Brigitte... why did you do that?”

“To see if it was sharp enough. Here.” She presents the knife to him, “It’s good to go.”

“Jesus fucking Christ... I hate that you just do that.”

Brigitte wonders if she’ll ever stop feeling a bit warm inside, a bit shy, whenever his concern becomes audible. Wonders if she’ll ever want to.

He gently takes her arm and inspects the cut. It’s a habit of hers. Trauma, he guesses. Sometimes, when handling knives, or just passing him one, she just rolls up her sleeve and cuts. He knows that after that, until it heals, her eyes will be on the clock.

She’s not healing so quickly these days.

“Remind me never to ask for that carving knife again.” He says.

The cut is decent, not as deep as some of the others. While it’s bleeding good, Brigitte thinks that it’s going to heal good too. An addition to the scars that cover both of her arms, wrist to elbow.

“This is gonna scar.” Sam says, “But, credit where credit is due – steady as a surgeon. Maybe you ought to go premed.”

“Maybe.”

Brigitte retrieves her arm and goes to the bathroom to get their usual stock of supplies: iodine, cotton, gauze, plaster. They’re all in their neat little cupboard.

_(other girls have make up stuff, I have antiseptic)_

While she’s getting the cotton balls, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The dark circles around her eyes, she feels, compliment the orbs held in them. Her hair is shorter now, shoulder-length and despite having spent ample time with it like that, she still feels a bit naked. But it’s her own. Her clothes are different as well - a bit more her size. Still black, dark green and similar gothic hues, still layered, but they fit more snugly, a fact that Sam appreciates... and always makes a point of telling her.

_(I’ll never understand what about this mess he finds so beautiful)_

Almost one year gone; and everything’s so different that they’re the same.

Sometimes, in her happier moments, Brigitte likes to pretend that the past year, or at least most of it, never happened. That her mother wasn’t convicted of manslaughter, that her house wasn’t sold, that her father didn’t never call, that she didn’t move in with Sam, that she’s not back in school as (far as the rumors go) the resident freak with a tragedy chip on her shoulder and a drug dealer boyfriend to match.

In rarer moments, Brigitte pretends that Ginger never really died; that she was just out by sixteen. That she’s happy somewhere. Still sixteen, forever sixteen.

These days, Brigitte is sixteen too and sometimes she feels completely amazed that life still exists.

_(give me a year, Ginge, I'll show you)_

“Shit!” Sam’s voice interrupts her nostalgia. Brigitte knows what it is – he made a move and isn’t happy with it. His use of the word is versatile and she knows just by the tone of his voice exactly what he means.

_(and all of it is so old and it’s all still new somehow)_

Brigitte returns to the living room. Sam is carefully observing his faux-bonsai, brow furrowed, trying to decide how to undo what he just did. She sits down and proceeds to extract a cotton ball from the nylon bag.

“Would you trust me with anesthetized patients?” she asks.

“I trusted you with my life, and I turned out okay.”

“You would.” She says, “I’m considering funerary sciences.”

“Now why does that not surprise me?”

“I’m thinking about Vancouver.”

Sam raises an eyebrow.

“Why Vancouver?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“Amen to that.”

Brigitte soaks the iodine into the cotton ball. A slight movement alerts her and she looks down to see two bird skulls, separated only by a closed loop slipknot _(the best I've ever tied)_ dangling from her neck. She looks up at Sam, slowly carving up his newest creation, getting back on track.

Brigitte smiles.

_(together forever)_

She starts cleaning the wound and sees that he’s right. It’ll leave a scar.


End file.
